Bradley Fikes writes in the NCtimes.com
A few years ago, I accepted global warming theory with few doubts. I wrote several columns for this paper condemning what I thought were unfair attacks by skeptics and defending the climate scientists.
Boy, was I naive.
Since the Climategate emails and documents revealed active collusion to thwart skeptics and even outright fraud, I’ve been trying to correct the record of my earlier foolishness. In one of those columns, I even wrote: “And see Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) for global warming science without the political spin.”
In fact, Real Climate was and is nothing more than the house organ of global warming activists, concerned more with politics than with science.
My mistake was assuming only the purest of motives of the global warming alarmists, while assuming the worst of the skeptics. In fact, the soi-disant moralists of the global warming movement can also exploit their agenda for profit.
Read the entire story here in the NCtimes.com
h/t to ClimateDepot
welcome to the dark side.
He’s still naive. One naive over-reaction to another.
Maybe the problem isn’t with the scientists at all.
🙂
Al Gore probably won’t like this.
I hope he doesn’t take all this as unsettling.
As a former trumpeter of the AGW theory myself, I completely understand. Now that I doubt the settled “science”, people react in a whole different way. They will say things like, “Sounds like you are listening to Rush Limbaugh too much.” The interesting thing is that I am still a liberal in many ways. I am anti Rush and Fox News. They are the only ones who are really discussing the issue though, sadly in their own fear-promoting way. I wish NPR would take this on and run with it. True science is the pursuit of what is really happening, not what we think or wish to happen. The older I get the less I “know”.
Good for Bradley. Maybe other journalists will see the light as well, or at the very least see the golden oppurtunities that being a ‘Sceptic’ reporter could offer.
All the cushiest jobs in warmist journalism are already spoken for and nothing gets up a new ‘Hacks’ nose more than a well ensconsed incumbant senior journalist.
I think getting the snowball rolling on demanding a review of scientific methodology is first and foremost. These folks haven’t had their work reviewed and validated but are using it as the basis for a hugely expensive CO2 abatement taxes and regulations. It is folly to trust them at face value without doing our due diligence and that means open books on everything.
If any genuine scientist sees this (link below) and doesn’t feel his stomach churning, I will lose all faith in science…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_climatology_conspiracy.html
I’m pretty disappointed that this found publication only in American Thinker, an intellectual on-line publication, but highly partisan (conservative). Perhaps it’s because most MSM reporters and editors, unlike Bradley Fikes, aren’t comfortable enough with their rational thinking skills to reevaluate their beliefs when new evidence appears.
Kudos to Mr. Fikes, who has departed the “Dark Side” for the light of the actual search for truth.
If I were a reporter, and were faced with the prospect of remaining silent or admitting in print to being naive… I think I would want to crawl under a rock and never come back out. What he did was very tough, very difficult to come out and say that.
To refresh everyone’s memory.
—-> The most important thing in life is to ask the right question, often.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932.
science was settled on that, so nuclear power plants were never built.
[quote]welcome to the dark side.[/quote]
Gives “thumbs up” sign while cashing check from Exxon Mobil.
An accusation of ‘outright fraud’ against a scientist is extremely serious. Yet when we follow Mr Fikes’ hyperlink we find just this …
Tim,
Attached are the calibration residual series for experiments based on available networks
back to:
AD 1000
AD 1400
AD 1600
I can’t find the one for the network back to 1820! But basically, you’ll see that the residuals are pretty red for the first 2 cases, and then not significantly red for the 3rd case–its even a bit better for the AD 1700 and 1820 cases, but I can’t seem to dig them up. In any case, the incremental changes are modest after 1600–its pretty clear that key predictors drop out before AD 1600, hence the redness of the residuals, and the notably larger uncertainties farther back…
You only want to look at the first column (year) and second column (residual) of the files. I can’t even remember what the other columns are!
Let me know if that helps. Thanks,
mike
p.s. I know I probably don’t need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on this, I’m providing these for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of “dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things…
The words “Dirty Laundry” in quotes. Is that the sum total of the evidence that a fraud has been committed? Please tell me you’ve got more than that. Who was defrauded? Where? When?
Thin soup again.
In a second hand bookshop some years ago I read an entry in an antique encyclopedia telling the reader in no uncertain terms that heavier than air flight would never be achieved by mankind.
The science was settled.
As someone who went on to have a career as a pilot I wish I’d had the money and the foresight to have bought the encyclopedia at the time.
Jay you remarked “I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.” You really are missing the bigger picture. The day that happens will be the same day that Rush Limbaugh becomes a liberal. Anyone who doesn’t lean to the left knows that the mainstream media is as biased as Rush Limbaugh and will protect the agenda of the left to their death. The only difference is the liberal media never admits it and apparently folks like you are fooled by that. Do you really think global warming is the ONLY issue where the liberal media including NPR recognizes only one side of the argument?
To Bradley Fikeas and Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
Welcome to your beginning foray from intelligence into the wonderful world of ‘wisdom’ where you become aware that the more you think you know the more you find you don’t.
Well I must confess to having been a warmer at one time. It lasted about 1 day. Then a fellow Libertarian asked me the question that launched me on my inquiry into AGW. He asked; “are you going to believe whatever government tells you?” Hmmm. To a Libertarian that’s a powerful argument. At least it convinced me to explore the issue more thoroughly. So i started doing more research and became more and more doubtful of AGW. The “Great Global Warming Swindle” convinced me it was a fraud. Then I found WUWT and became a diehard skeptic. I’ve never regretted that decision.
Gives “thumbs up” sign while cashing check from Exxon Mobil.
He’s not going to get very rich by doing that:
Exxon-Mobil = $23million, US Govt = $79 BILLION…
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/massive-climate-funding-exposed/
Everyone has the right to be naïve, and put the trust in those who makes us believe.
One could argue that this is neither rational nor logic, but in reality, and in practice, for most people, it is. If most people were adhering to theoretical rationale and logic they would probably not trust science, nor the scientific process, at all, ’cause there’d be to many damned people claiming everything and have the skill set to “prove” it.
People are supposed to be able to be naïve, because they’re supposed to be able to trust the process…. that led up to the theory of relativity, for instance.
Still don’t believe people have a right to be naïve? Did you do the blue prints for your house, and then built it yourself, including pipes, plumbing, and wiring, or did you trust other people to do it according to the “process”?
Hello Al,
Thanks to you, and all the others. I find being a skeptic perfectly rational when massive fraud and unprofessional conduct is found in a highly politicized field. Even in the field of embryonic stem cells, I have never seen this degree of polarization and hostility to different points of view.
Being a skeptic doesn’t mean I deny significant AGW could be happening; it just means I’m withholding judgment until the fraud is removed from the science, and skeptics are welcomed into the field, as is the norm for science elsewhere. Of course, that point will go over the heads of fervent AGW believers, to whom all who don’t accept AGW are “denialists.”
The repeated derogatory Climategate references to skeptics was a red flag to me that the Climategate gang was engaged in pseudoscience. They decided the theory was true and collected and evaluated evidence under that presumption.
Global Warming Hysteria: Carbon Prices Plunge in Europe
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/12/22/global-warming-hysteria-carbon-prices-plunge-in-europe/
Welcome Bradley. Glad to see you have decided to think for yourself. Kind of invigorating isn’t it?
Definitely OT but I just saw this link on Small Dead Animals about Build-A-Bear. Outrageous. I’m speechless (which is remarkable for me)
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/build-a-climate-scare-why-you-should-boycott-build-a-bear/
To Bradley Fikes and Commenter Jay Neumark,
Congratulations on breaking the herd mentality and misrepresentations of the AGW crowd. Hope you enjoy the fact based critical thinking used by we skeptics.
I’d like to thank Anthony Watts once again; if it weren’t for websites like WUWT, the AGW machine would have rolled over all of us, like the CFC ban treaty (Montreal Protocol). Anybody remember that? The CFC ban was fairly benign in terms of economic impact (it did deprive us of freon an especially efficient coollant), but nonetheless, the CFC ban was a triumph for junk science that was debunked after the ban was passed. CFC fear mongering was one in a long-line of late 20th century junk science scares (DDT, Alar, Y2K, silicone implants, cyclamates et al et al). AGW is the big one though because it is meant to lead to a few elites (Hansen, Gore, Soros, the UN) taking control of the energy markets. That’s why “we happy few” gathered at WUWT, must share information and analysis to thwart this most odeous power and money grab. Cheers.
My background is similar to the author’s, except that I’m just an engineer so nobody cares what I think.
I read the claims at CA several months ago and dismissed them as plausible arguments from an implausible source. When the ClimateGate letters came out, CA became plausible and the consensus science significantly less so.
Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
I am solidly with you on all of those points. But the AGW panic and the ridiculous posturing by some self-described “liberals” (who really are’t liberal at all) are powering the recovery of the Republicans, and making Rush Limbaugh and Fox News look “fair and balanced” by comparison.
Curiously enough (and worryingly) the Fox News special on global warming (see ClimateAudit.org for the Youtube version) is well done, toned down and intelligent programming on the subject.
The Huffington Post could have done that sort of investigation but unfortunately it is still self-censoring the doubts of an increasing number of its audience.
The pummeling of liberalism using AGW as the pummel by the right wing of the Republican party makes me wince, but at the moment on this key issue the Democratic Party has very little to say.
There are plenty more liberals like you who are skeptical of the whole AGW panic, who are now announcing themselves to the world as the Climate of Fear collapses.
I think the older we get, the more we see patterns of human behavior such as “apocalyptic fevers” that happen once or twice a generation or so. We don’t know less, but we do recognize the cyclical nature of a lot of human behavior.
There is a book, written in the 19th century, that describes what AGW theory has become.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
I commend the author of the article referenced in this blog post for cmoing to grips with the current manifestation of a serious problem.
Takes a lot of humble pie, what price Monbiot?
Britain is cold but not cold enough to freeze hell……:-)
Seasons best wishes to all sceptics!! [ and you lot at this blog, Anthony (great job) and the overworked and dedicated team(recently -exceptionally hard working).
It’s a work in progress.
Concerning: “I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.” While I agree with another here that NPR is part of the MSM, I kinda want to think they are genuinely reachable on this issue. Maybe. The final crash will come when someone in the MSM realizes what a major story this is – a real world changer, and career maker.
Bradley Fikes – “Boy, was I naive”
Common sense wins thank god. Plus the willingness to accept you were wrong, despite arguing long and hard for the opposite opinion.
Wake up others please.
The vast majority of people have neither the skills or education to really know what is going on. That is what makes people like Al Gore truly despicable — He knows he is playing on people’s ignorance.
Better late than never.
Jay Neumark (13:44:24) : “I wish NPR would take this [AGW scam] on and run with it.”
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Good one, Jay.
>>True science is the pursuit of what is really happening, not what we think or wish to happen. The older I get the less I “know”
If you applied that thinking to things beyond science you might stop being a liberal altogether.
On the down side, you might have to get new friends.
The words “Dirty Laundry” in quotes. Is that the sum total of the evidence that a fraud has been committed? Please tell me you’ve got more than that. Who was defrauded? Where? When?
Deliberately withholding evidence that goes against your theory in published research is scientific fraud. It is misrepresenting evidence. When you involve someone else in the fraud, that is a conspiracy. When this is done in a clinical trial in the pharmaceutical industry, people can go to jail.
abc radio in australia had cosmos magazine founder wilson da silva on air last nite, giving a run-down of the biggest science stories of the year. was climategate included? of course not. but “Nature” mag was given a big plug and computers achieving full consciousness in the near future was enthusiastically brought up. da silva added that such computers could then solve the BIGGEST problems known to man, such as climate change! to give the presenter credit, he disagreed, saying we could simply turn the computer off.
About Cosmos
Our Cosmos Teacher’s Notes reach 60% of Australian high schools, and we produce a wide range of quality editorial products – such as websites, posters and DVDs – for a range of clients. ..
COSMOS is the brainchild of Wilson da Silva, a former ABC TV science reporter and past president of the World Federation of Science Journalists. It is backed by an Editorial Advisory Board that includes Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, ABC Radio’s Robyn Williams, and is chaired by Dr Alan Finkel, the neuroscientist and philanthropist who is the Chancellor of Monash University in Melbourne.
COSMOS is produced by Luna Media Pty Ltd, a boutique publishing house in Sydney that has twice been named Best Publisher at the Bell Awards.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/about
2007: Cosmos: TWO OF US: Dr Alan Finkel and Wilson da Silva
Wilson da Silva, 41, is the editor and creator of COSMOS, a science magazine backed by Dr Alan Finkel, 53. Finkel, the millionaire founder of Axon Instruments, has spent US$400,000 buying tickets for da Silva and himself in the hope of being the first Australian space tourists to fly on Virgin Galactic in 2008.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/media/1262/two-of-us-dr-alan-finkel-and-wilson-da-silva/
Wikipedia: Wilson da Silva
He has been an on-air reporter and producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television science program Quantum, a staff journalist on The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, a foreign correspondent for Reuters, science editor of ABC Online, a correspondent for London’s New Scientist magazine, and served as managing editor of the science magazines Newton, 21C and Science Spectra.[1] From 2006-09, he was the founding editor-in-chief of G Magazine, an environmental consumer lifestyle title that was the country’s first carbon neutral magazine and produced on 100% recycled paper…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_da_Silva
cosmos deputy editor is john pickrell:
11 Dec: Cosmos: John Pickrell: No climate for games
The hacked emails affair is a pointless distraction: the science of global warming is unequivocal, and it’s time for governments meeting in Copenhagen to focus on action if we are to save millions of lives.
The evidence that global warming is real, and that it is almost entirely caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gasses, is based on the work of many thousands of scientists across the planet, in many countries, and employed by hundreds of independent institutions. To ignore this truly vast body of work, relying on thousands upon thousands of separate data sets that all point in the same direction, is patently absurd…
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/3193/no-climate-games
Cosmos:Earth Journalism Award for COSMOS writer
John Pickrell, the deputy editor of COSMOS, has taken out the global Climate Change and Nature category at the prestigious Earth Journalism Awards in Copenhagen for a feature article on ocean acidification.
Almost 1,000 journalists, bloggers and citizen reporters from 148 countries registered in the competition, with just 15 winners selected by a combination of online votes and an independent jury of media and climate experts..
The Earth Journalism Awards were organised by Internews, an international media development organisation, as a way to increase coverage of climate change in the lead up to United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and to “highlight the efforts of journalists reporting on this challenging subject around the world.”…
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3212/earth-journalism-award-cosmos-writer
Cosmos Editorial Advisory Board includes:
Robyn Williams is an Australian science journalist and broadcaster who has hosted The Science Show on ABC Radio National since its inception in 1975…
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/about/advisory/
Pickrell has three pieces in Science Mag:
1. Could a Deeper Shade of REDD Close the Carbon Gap?
2. As Forest Deal Nears, New Index Maps Profit Potential in Trees
3. Fighting Deforestation Could Imperil Some Ecosystems, Study Finds
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/environmentclimate/
Nat Geo: John Pickrell: Global Warming “Marches On”; Past Decade Hottest Known
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091208-copenhagen-climate-conference-global-warming-climategate.html
finally, to those who still want to think AGW is a ‘liberal’ thing:
Conservatives to push Senate over US climate Bill
Senior Conservatives are to lobby Republicans in the US Senate to persuade
them to back a climate emissions Bill…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6964473.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084
It was never the actual science, the problem has always been in the way the science has been reported to the public. A balance which Anthony and friends should be lauded for their efforts in redressing.
Anyone else think the WUWT team and Steve McIntyre should be put forward for a joint Nobel prize?
US Court Orders Records Unsealed In Cap-And-Trade Fraud Case
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200912171847dowjonesdjonline000636&title=us-court-orders-records-unsealed-in-cap-and-trade-fraud-case
Congratulations on thinking for yourself. I wish more people would do it!
But don’t be too eager to fall into the opposite trap, which is to assume that all climate science is an out-and-out fraud. I started out in the sceptics camp, back in the early 2000s, when Steve McIntyre was trying to extract raw data about the hockey-stick from Mann, and immediately noted that Mr McIntyre was making reasonable requests, and pointing out real problems, while Mann and his colleagues were refusing to answer questions and smearing when they could. At the time it seemed obvious who the bad guys were, and the amazing thing is that they have got away with this behaviour for so long.
So I started out with the assumption that Mann et al were not to be trusted. But McIntyre, although he was being treated abysmally, refused to fight like with like, and has stuck to only making statements he could justify. You will see that he has no position on Global Warming – it might or it might not be happening. All he points out is that the ‘proofs’ offered so far are so flawed as to be useless. If someone came up with positive evidence that Global Warming was actually taking place, he would be happy to accept it.
It now seems to me to be highly unlikely that the AGW hypothesis is true. Every bit of ‘evidence’ which has been adduced turns out to be poor, and in many cases overtly manufactured (though you will not hear McIntyre claim that). But that is pre-judgement on my part. McIntyre is still looking at the evidence, and if he finds some that is credible, I believe he will happily publish that fact on Climate Audit. And that is as science should be done.
My view of this sorry affair is that Steve McIntyre has been standing up for proper science this last ten years, for a large part of that alone. I reckon that the least the world owes Steve is a Nobel prize, but I think we both know how unlikely that is. The best Steve can hope for is that his fight will be mentioned in text-books a hundred years from now as an object lesson in scientific bravery….
A brave man to modify his views in such a public way.I left a comment of support on his NYT site. If only a MS journalist ( apart from C. Booker of the Sunday Telegraph) would break with the ‘consensus’.
I am very pleased to see Bradley’s post reproduced here. I think you’ll see he is doing a credible job at making up lost ground in his other recent blog posts on this topic. Bradley wrote one of the most accurate and fare reviews of my book a few years ago (on a difficult and somewhat controversial topic – I won’t plug it here, not the place) and I was most impressed with his reporting. Welcome, have a cookie.
The problem of persuasion (please let’s avoid the religous overtones of ‘conversion’) is an important one if we want to see a return to sound science and sensible policy making.
It helps, when opening the door, that we show that the house of scepticism has many rooms. It helps to avoid colapsing the issue into a political polarisation.
The danger is to send out the message that the evil enemy is the environment movement generally, and so anyone who has campaigned for some nature conservation is not welcome.
I remember my younger sister in the 80s saying to a feminist active in the 70s that she was not a feminist. The older feminist asked if she thought women should be paided the same as men when they do the same job, and whether she thought women should be force to resign when they got married? That’s what she campaigned for. I once picnicked with some right wing anti-greenie friends of family in an old growth forest out the back of a now very expensive beach resort where I shivered with the memory, only 10 years earlier almost in that spot, of the shock as the person beside me was suddenly grabbed and dragged away by the dreadlocks in the protest to preserve this forest.
The gains of the conservation movement of the 60s and 70s are for all to now enjoy. Part of the reason the US (and Australia, where I live) is cleaner now is due to regulation. Law. Yes, being told what to do and not to do. And another part of the reason is that the dirty work has been exported to China to be undertaken at near subsistence – and so to support our afluence. When Americans deny or ignore this global reality it offends many potential supporters.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it has through the right side of the US media that the sceptical voice has mostly been heard – and where it has credit is indeed due. But just as not all feminists are separatists, likewise not all environmentalists are fanatical control freaks blind to reasonable persuasion. And many of them are probably right now surveying WUWT – a haven for enviro-minded sceptics. So, from one greenie to another…welcome aboard!
Up until several years ago I was neutral on global warming, I just didn’t know which side was correct. Then one day I was driving, listening to NPR. They did a segment on farmers journals which seemed to prove that we are planting about 2 weeks sooner than we did several hundred years ago. That seemed to me at the time a convincing argument (I didn’t yet know the difference between natural warming and AGW). About 10 minutes later it occurred to me that the segment never once mentioned the medieval warming period, which seemed to me to be disingenuous at best.
Since then most times I have encountered exaggerations it has been from the alarmist side. Now I read about raw data being hidden/destroyed or perhaps massaged. I see computer code that applies “fudge factors”. UEA says the fudge factor was never used for published results, but what was it for then?
I have drawn my own conclusion.
Bradley Fikes, welcome here! I was welcomed here two years ago when I apostasised from active support of AGW. I was absolutely determined to get to the bottom of the science, and since the warmists had posted so many “answering skeptics’ issues” I had to study for about six weeks solid before I was really sure which “side” had the truth. In the end, it was a very clear, clean division. Click my name to read a self-taught skeptical climate scientist’s account.
Tarpon:
I don’t know about the state of the education system today, but I learned about photosynthesis in grade 7. That was all I needed to know to set the alarm bells off in my head when the AGW crowd started calling CO2 a toxin. It’s not as if a person needed a science degree to have smelled a rat. Public ignorance indeed.
Being a skeptic means to me, of having an attitude of “Question Everything”
Its not having an open mind but having a mind that is guarded to the con and con-men who are always probing for that next score.
But don’t be too eager to fall into the opposite trap, which is to assume that all climate science is an out-and-out fraud.
I’m aware of that peril as well. I wouldn’t go so far as to say all climate science is a fraud. Skepticism does not mean disbelief, it means not being credulous. Once the fraud and bad science is full exposed, we’ll have a much better understanding of the good science on climate.
Hate to say this, but there pleanty of uninformed climate skeptics too – just not nearly as many as on the AGW side.
Bradley, if you want to add a Pulitzer to your resume, rely on the resources on this site and at Climateaudit then follow the money.
It’s a bit like waking up from a dream ain’t it.
I’ve always been a sceptic on AGW. As soon as I heard about it back in about 1988 (I was at University (studying Geology) at the time) I thought it was a complete crock. Nothing I’ve seen, read, heard or experienced in any other way since then has changed my mind.
TS – Concerning: “I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.” While I agree with another here that NPR is part of the MSM, I kinda want to think they are genuinely reachable on this issue. Maybe.
I do agree with you but not for the same reasons as you. Don’t forget NPR is government funded and 2010 doesn’t look so good for Dems. If NPR was smart (meaning that want gov. funding after 2010) they may indeed be “genuinely reachable” on the AGW issue.
Congratulations, Bradley. Uncritical belief is a difficult thing to overcome, and usually cannot be imposed from outside ones self.
Must have been an existential experience.
For me being a liberal means being against capital punishment, in favour of gun control and universal health care and expecting everybody to contribute to society according to their means with the unfortunates of society being given a helping hand when necessary.
There is absolutely nothing about AGW which makes it a liberal issue. There is nothing about being a liberal which makes for tolerence of fraud and bogus science. There is nothing right wing or left wing about it.
So why are left/liberals groups and individuals continually looking to excuse the inexcusable? Why does the lead against AGW come so much from right wing sources? It is a big eye-opener to see the obvious lack of brain power amongst so many of our ‘leaders’.
In the UK I am in the appalling position of seeing a General Election coming up in the next few months but only the loathsome BNP and the Little Englanders of UKIP offer sensible comments on AGW. The only exceptions are a few older generation conservative politicians who are being ignored by the Boy David.
The only thing certain is I will not under any circumstance vote for Gordon Clown or the Green party.
Bradley Fikes said “Boy, was I naive.”
I don’t think so. I think you were misled by authority figures that you trusted, and a corrupted process of peer review and scientific publication which should have been beyond reproach. You’re more akin to the victim of a crime. You wouldn’t say ‘Boy was I naive to get mugged’ or ‘Boy was I naive that my bank went bust and lost my savings’.
You’d be naive to put your life savings on a 100-1 outsider because it had a lucky name.
It looks to me that there is a lot of work to be done to straighten out the true picture of recent past climate and how significant the effect of anthropic CO2 on future climate will be. That has to start with a rigorous peer reviewed scientific process and readily available, version controlled data and code wherein which there can be no political affiliation of right/left/up or down.
It would be interesting to conduct a research project to determine how similar belief in AGW is to involvement in “cult” movements. AGW adherents seem incapable of conversing with skeptics. They classify those that disagree with them as “denialists” as if their “religion” is under attack. Their use of the images of traincars and deathcamps gives me the feeling that I’m in Guyana being shouted down to by a bunch of Jim Jones believers.
I’m happy for the few people that have begun to escape that mindset.
I’ve been trying to follow several California environmental/science reporters and commentators after the e-mail and code leak (?)/ hack (?). One of which is Mr. Fikes’ weblog.
It really is quite fascinating to see the difference in how the affair is represented. Mr. Fikes’ Sci-Tech weblog at NC Times has been relentless in trying to put the new information in context. As far as I know, it’s the only reporting for a newspaper in California that has accepted the challenging task. I’d be curious to know otherwise. I’m calling Chico News and Review, stat.
And that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be surprised that humans are contributing to warming. It’s just that we need honest accounts of what’s actually going on. I mean, what’s up with that? hahaha, oh boy.
Kudos, excellent work.
Deliberately withholding evidence that goes against your theory in published research is scientific fraud.
Fair enough. So let us be absolutely careful, clear and specific. You are levelling an accusation of outright fraud against Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University for the withholding of evidence. Is that correct?
Please be specific, which published theory in which papers was contradicted by these data? What exactly do the data show?
Please confirm that you wish to make a serious and highly public accusation of scientific fraud against Professor Mann, in the knowledge that it will almost certainly be defamatory if you cannot provide adequate supporting evidence.
Note that Professor Mann did not actually withhold anything, he provided some data to a colleague and asked that he be consulted before those data were shared more widely. In my opinion, given the absurd distortions that some are prepared to indulge in this seems to me more indicative of sensible precautions than fraud.
More detail, please. I am sure that you won’t object to me forwarding your allegations on to Professor Mann while we are waiting, and cross-posting this to RealClimate?
Jeremy (13:57:34):
“What he did was very tough, very difficult to come out and say that.”
Agreed. Do you remember George Monbiot of the Guardian?
Over time they will become increasingly sceptical. IF AGW is wrong then nature and research will reveal the error[s] over time. Remember we were told by the IPCC that CO2 is a well mixed gas, now NASA says no it’s lumpy. We were told about the “death spiral” of Arctic ice melt but now we see recovery since 2007. Even today we are seeing killer COLD weather not killer HEAT.
Those that push people to act now, no time to waste are afraid that their scam would be exposed by nature (see Gore, Pachauri).
Pachauri should stand down immediately if he has any dignity and does not want himself to be remembered by history as one of the greatest hypocritical frauds ever. Gore would come a close second because he is not head of the IPCC thus no conflict of interest.
This North San Diego newspaper blogger got an unexpected number of comments due to a Climate Depot link. South, East and West San Diego have been alerted! Wait till she sees what hits her now.
What has happened and will continue to happen is that the voice of authority that so many have relied on in order to dismiss skeptical claims has been suddenly deflated. The authority of dozens of scientific academies around the world is finally shown to be not the voice of their members but that of their politically motivated leaders.
Physicists and us chemists too are the closest so far to tossing out the writers of our official statements on Global Warming. I know the former president of the American Chemical Society, Breslow, who works up the street from me, just past NASA’s GISS (above Tom’s Diner) at Columbia. His take on Global Warming that he told me after an unrelated seminar in which he was heckled about lack of concern with impending environmental disaster was quite brief: “Politics is broken”.
If you’d like a better understanding of the viewpoint of most chemists, note that he also scoffed at the ban on benzene due to a tiny suspected number of leukemia cases in some factory, proudly pointing out that benzene was their favored hand-washing solvent back in the day. We use acetone instead now. It was easier before the Safety Police arrived on the scene in the late 90s who noticed this and installed solvent detectors on our drain pipes in order to fine us! It now costs more to throw away a chemical than to buy it and they wont let us store large libraries of them any more either. Organic Synthesis just isn’t as fun any more when half a century worth of half-full bottles of reagents are no longer kept in lighted walk-in closets at the end of the hall of each group’s lab. Number of serious accidents caused by such chemical “morgues”? Zero. Amount of weekend research lost waiting for reagents to arrive in the mail? A lot! Number of creative ideas no longer stimulated by chemical morgues? All it takes is one at a time to delay energy or medical breakthroughs.
Common sense has been lost. “Environmentalist” bureaucrats have no common sense, yet they already police local affairs. Climate Alarmism is the ultimate power grab by such control freaks. Environmentalism’s petty tyranny has finally turned enough children into young adult fanatics willing to inflict a failed revolution upon us all using the full force of government, Constitution be damned. At least the courts still have the last word and do not suppress opposing views once they are forced to hear a lawsuit. A Scopes Trial or two would be quite effective for skeptics.
Hop over to RealClimate.org to hear their wailing demonization of skeptics, and note a strong undercurrent of psychological projection in this scattered sample:
“It would seem if this story (for this is all this tale is: a story to frighten) is true then denialism is much like the Church of Scientology or indeed any other cult.”
“Someday soon, maybe now, we realize that further discourse with such fools and idiots serves no purpose. Such denialism is now clearly dangerous.”
“Who is to blame for the development of this irrational cult of a postulated solar influence upon the Earth’s climate?
The IPCC is not without responsibility for providing the free ride for solar crusaders.”
Such blog comments are highly encouraged by statements from environmentalist leaders:
“An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds.” – Joe Romm (Clinton official)
“What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act.” – David Suzuki
“I wrote a post that advocated for the jailing and execution of global warming deniers. If any of you have read my former posts – I may get very angry sometimes – but I truly don’t want for anyone to die. I’m vehemently against the death penalty – and do my best to respect all forms of life.” – Anonymous retraction of an article on TalkingPointsMemo.com
4 years ago you couldn’t convince me that Global Warming wasn’t a done deal.
Then somebody challenged me to look for myself.
Darned if he wasn’t onto the real story.
Welcome to the outside of the box, Bradley.
Einstein on smashing atoms at will and predictions of manned flight reminds me of the alleged prediction by T.J.Watson, founder of IBM that there would ever only be a market for five computers. This quote is disputed, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson
Nevertheless, if he did say such a thing, and if Einstein really did say what he is supposed to have said, then we also have to admit that these men, geniuses in quite different ways, were almost certainly open-minded and flexible enough to change their opinions when the facts changed, or rather when further knowledge and experience was gained.
It would be nice to think, would it not, that the current AGW-catastrophists were so open-minded and flexible.
I too was a “believer”. I got my electric from wind turbines and bought a low emissions car. When the UK temperature record was broken in 2003 by 2degrees I felt that kind of vindicated my belief, even though it was merely a weather event rather than a climate event – I guess a lot of other Brits felt the same. Then in 2007 the “Great Global Warming Swindle” came out. I didn’t see the program but I saw the row it caused in the comments of the Guardian newspaper. I also saw that the “deniers” were asking rational questions about the ice core data and in reply they were getting abusive ad-hominems. Something was clearly wrong. So I went to look at the graphs of the ice core data. At first the graphs were shown in high resolution and I could see some of the issues that were raised. Then suddenly the graphs dissappeared and were replaced with the comment “the high resolution graphs have been removed since the plotting artefacts of the high resolution data is misleading and could lead to erroneous interpretations”. So something really strange was happening. So I got the Vostok and other ice-core raw data from the web and plotted it in Excel. Then I could see for myself that the CO2 did indeed FOLLOW the temp and that high levels of CO2 did not result in permanently high temps nor were higher temps and higher CO2 levels than today unusual.
If anything the ice-core data showed not that global warming was real and dangerous, but that high levels of CO2 had little impact on temperature. Since then the AGW has gone rather quiet on ice-core data.
I went over to RealClimate to discuss my findings with “the Team” but they were highly dismissive. I realised that perfectly reasonable scientific enquiry was not welcome at RealClimate and the website was nothing more than a means by which “the Team” could communicate their belief system to their disciples – most of whom had political motivations for being there.
Clearly I had been lied to. AGW was not real. I changed sides. Since then I have seen the same kind of lie perpetrated over tree ring data and surface station data, and each time this has been associated with cover-ups and obfuscation and each time RealClimate has spouted nothing more than propaganda in their defence.
I am not afraid of AGW, what I am afraid of is that a small number of AGW proponents have succesfully manipulated millions of people through lies and subterfuge and misrepresentation.
this is starting to sound like an intervention or an AA-meeting…not that I would know of course 🙂
The obvious thing is as the global mean temperature continue not to follow the predictions of the IPCC, there will be more rats leaving the sinking ship of AGW alarmists. I hope we will soon all come to our senses and finally have a real scientific debate WITHOUT the politicians, and their “bribe” money that funds a lot of the climate science research these days. Somehow, I doubt this will happen but one can only hope.
Mr. Fikes,
Welcome to the real world. I must say that you will now retire at night without complete or perfect answers to the mechanisms of global climate; fact is, we don’t know. But, we do know we don’t know, and realise we need more data and more study.
It is a more disquieting world than the AGW world, with its comfey “settled science” cushions, but there’s a heck of a lot more discussion and ideas and thoughts going on in this real world.
Me too!
Hey Brad,
Welcome to the Skeptics Club. Two quick pieces of advice. In the eyes of your liberal colleagues you have become a traitorous pariah – prepare yourself for exile unto the Wilderness. Secondly, start digging. Live by the immortal words of General “Buck” Turgidson: “I smell a rat. A big, fat Commie rat!”
All The Best!
Bradley, I have found that it is much better to be completely sure of what little I as an individual can actually know than it was to be following along with a crowd that seemed to know everything, even though I couldn’t understand why any of what they said was true. Maybe your experience will be the same.
It will also be interesting to see if some of your former “friends” who thought you were smart because you agreed with them about AGW won’t now treat you as a dim-witted pawn in the hands of us evil skeptics. Might make an interesting follow-up column in your paper.
re: Phil Clarke
Bradley, don’t rise to the bait offered by this RC-troll. It’s a trap. Sit back and watch him get taken to task.
I sympathize with all who wish that NPR or some similar outfit would examine this, and are wondering why they won’t. I don’t count them out completely yet; we are at a remarkable time where everyone who is involved in this in any way has to make a choice – face the evidence honestly, or support the status quo? Before Climategate, it took a great deal of work to come to a scientific conclusion, and it is no surpise that the average non-technical person erred on the side of those acknowledged to be “experts”.
But now, the revelations are so gross, and so noxious, that it takes a conscious act of will to ignore them. It takes a decision to deliberately hide from the truth, and any news organization that does this is no longer worthy of the name.
Anyone who look at this honestly I believe will be forced to come to the same conclusions that Bradley Fikes has, which is that nothing can be known for certain until the fraud is removed from the equations. *Nothing* is certain until that is done, and the people to blame for that are NOT the “skeptics” but rather are those scientists who abused their positions and caused the fraud. And anyone, and any organization, which refuses to acknowledge this must now be recognized as being complicit in the fraud, since it is too obvious now for “plausible denial” to be an excuse.
NPR, it is time to choose – report honestly, or be complicit in the fraud yourselves. You can’t be a party to a lie on this issue and try to hang onto your credibility with any other issues, credibility doesn’t work that way. Choose.
Phil Clarke – “who was defrauded”
The American Taxpayer who funded the research that led to the paper(s) for which the data and methods were hidden from public scrutiny.
That’s who is defrauded.
If Mr Mann worked for himself, or a private company, I would have no problems with his hiding all this under a Intellectual Property umbrella.
Problem is, We all PAID for it, and he was not forthcoming about it.
Oh how nice, Phil Clarke is using this blog to try and professionnally threaten Fikes for his thoughts.
Nice display of thuggery there, Phil. Although I doubt anyone here is surprised.
MrCPhysics (13:55:03) :
“If any genuine scientist sees this (link below) and doesn’t feel his stomach churning, I will lose all faith in science…”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_climatology_conspiracy.html
It turned my stomach. Ben Santer is a punk and a bully, pure and simple – and should resign (or be removed) from LLNL…
>>TerrySkinner (16:05:34) :
For me being a liberal means being against capital punishment, in favour of gun control and universal health care and expecting everybody to contribute to society according to their means with the unfortunates of society being given a helping hand when necessary.
>>There is absolutely nothing about AGW which makes it a liberal issue. There is nothing about being a liberal which makes for tolerence of fraud and bogus science. There is nothing right wing or left wing about it.
>>So why are left/liberals groups and individuals continually looking to excuse the inexcusable? Why does the lead against AGW come so much from right wing sources? It is a big eye-opener to see the obvious lack of brain power amongst so many of our ‘leaders’.
I’ve been a skeptic since I realized that this was more about politics than science. I began digging into the people who were at the heart of this whole scam, people like Maurice Strong and his ilk. You may be a good hearted liberal with perfectly reasonable positions (even if they are positions I disagree with).
But the hard truth is at the far left of liberal thought is a core that believes fundamentally in economic redistribution controlled by an intellectual elite who just know what’s best for us. That thinking goes by many names, socialism, communism, fascism, etc., but it’s all of a piece. I hate to break it to you but AGW was never about science and these people have admitted it over and over for any who were willing to listen. This was about money and power.
You might want to put that into your calculation the next time you hear conservatives talk about small government, transparency and freedom. Most of us actually mean it.
Wow . . . is all I can say after reading the comments. These are some amazing stories of confronting the science.
The Swift Institute on Global Warming [An extreme Malthusian view]
May, 2007
http://climateguy.blogspot.com/2007/05/taking-co2-seriously.html
Life is deadly. All living things that breathe oxygen burn their food and emit poisonous CO2 as a pollutant. With every breath they contribute to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and, hence, to global warming. And yet, for all the frantic formulas floating around aimed at the reduction of CO2 emissions, particularly through limitations on the burning of fossils fuels (dead living things), little attention has been paid to this obvious other source (still living things). Rough calculations suggest that CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are dwarfed by the emissions from these living things, including human beings. Emissions from human metabolism alone, assuming a world population of six billion people and an averaging of their state of activity, are estimated to be equivalent to approximately half of 1990 fossil fuel emissions. Add to these human sources the CO2 emissions from all other creatures on the planet, including plants which respire as well as photosynthesize, and the total amount of emissions from living things is staggering.
To forestall the forecasted calamities of global warming, there must be a reduction of “living things emissions” (LTE’s). This can be approached in two ways, by reducing the number of living things, through their humane or not so humane elimination, and by reducing the amount of respiration of each living thing, through enforceable limits on exertion. With regard to the first, we appear to be well on our way. The loss of habitat through development, deforestation, and agribusiness has contributed greatly to loss of life and species extinction. Warfare will continue to contribute significantly as well, along with genocide. Human and animal population control and sterilization further limit LTE’s. All of this is a good start, but just a start. It’s time to let go of our pets. The number of livestock on farms, which has swelled enormously, could be cut back substantially with the elimination of meat from our diet. We must also begin to give serious consideration to euthanizing expendable members of our family and community. With regard to worklife and lifestyle, we must work hard at not working hard, thereby lowering our metabolism, respiring less, and reducing our CO2 emissions. The impulse to exercise must be exorcised, along with fitness clubs, marathons, and organized sports. Caffeine, which speeds up metabolism, must be banned. The work ethic must be replaced by yoga and meditation. Only by minimizing all effort will we survive. If we are serious about reducing CO2 emissions, we must all do our part, as little as possible.
Phil C. You seem to be suggesting that Mann et al might be tempted to sue? Look at this by Lord Monckton: http://www.cfact.org/a/1652/Monckton-names-names-on-Climategate. He is clearly baiting a whole list of “The Team” to sue him. Problem for them is that would lead to the submitting to legal discovery procedures, and then it would all come out, not just what was revealed in the Climategate papers. I suspect Monckton has deep pockets. Go for it Dr Mann!
Bradley,
Welcome to the skeptic’s camp. I’ve been one since ’98, but generally thought AGW would implode like the 70’s Ice-Age business.
“Being a skeptic doesn’t mean I deny significant AGW could be happening; it just means I’m withholding judgment until the fraud is removed”
I’ve acquired raw data from GHCN. Links to data, fairly simple source code (Linux), and straight-forward workup are available at http://justdata.wordpress.com Feel free to drop by… If you leave a question or suggestion, I’ll generally crank out a new mini-analysis by the next day. Please, no questions on SSTs, I haven’t deciphered their mixed file formats, yet. :-/
Lord, let there be a healing power come down from heaven and make disbelievers out of these warming sinners.
Welcome to the true and correct line Bradley, which is skepticism. You can never trust anyone who has not proven themselves to you. Why? They are people, and people are the least trustworthy animals on the planet.
This is my first post here, but I have always been a skeptic of AGW. Thanks to WUWT and CA among others for all the great work they do, and American Thinker has been a leader in posting skeptical pieces. Most of the political AGW skepticism has come from the conservative side. In his farewell address President Eisenhower warned about gov funded science being allowed to dictate policy.
I don’t believe anyone above the age of 14 has a right to be naive about anything which will have an effect on anyone other than himself. Most of us have the desire and proclivity to be naive though, it is easier, no effort required. US citizens should know better, this nation would never have come to be through naivety and blind trust, and the founding fathers told us to never allow folly in government and that an uninformed or misinformed electorate would not be able to retain a functioning republic.
Whenever you find you have veered off the course you cannot get back onto the course by continuing to go straight ahead, you must “over-steer” to get back on track.
Congratulations! And thanks for your honesty.
“pat (15:02:21) :
abc radio in australia had cosmos magazine founder wilson da silva on air last nite, giving a run-down of the biggest science stories of the year. was climategate included? of course not. but “Nature” mag was given a big plug and computers achieving full consciousness in the near future was enthusiastically brought up. da silva added that such computers could then solve the BIGGEST problems known to man, such as climate change! to give the presenter credit, he disagreed, saying we could simply turn the computer off.”
Well, as such an intelligent computer would probably become a sceptic immediately, what choice would we have but switch it off?
But to be cereal, even the lesser computers i work with have never expressed much enthusiasm for AGW.
Bradley, et al.,
Yanno, in the normal course of events, we can’t all be expected to not believe the “peer reviewed” pronouncements of experts. As a matter of fact, we should generally listen to expert consensus.
When I first heard about AGW, I was concerned. I care about this stuff as a matter of course in my life. There was something, though, that niggled at me. It was the nature of the folks making the assertions. They seemed awfully aggressive. Disdainful. The comments were hyperbolic, too. That’s what sets me off.
When folks substitute rhetoric for science, my alarm bells go off. I started doing research.
The thing is, I was not met with tons of credible skeptical work. I just kept smelling something was off. It was only through reading this site (and others) and REALLY digging was I fully and confidently convinced that the ONLY proper stance on Warming (let alone the Anthropogenic sort) was skepticism.
It wasn’t easy dig out the truth and I’ll forgive any layman for getting sucked in. It was a brilliant plot and it almost worked.
I congratulate you, Bradley. The mark of a good professional is the ability to say, “I was wrong”.
Well done.
Back in the late ’80s I accepted AGW as a thesis that needed some verification and exploration. Being the PhD that I am, I did some digging. The thesis came up empty. Now we know why it was so empty. Yeah, from time to time we will get an En Nino and the temperatures will spike like ’98 but that is out of our hands. Pilmer has an interesting thesis on El Ninos being cased by earthquake storms in the western Pacific. If so the El Nino may hang a bit longer. Right now, all I can say is that we are really globally warming in Boston at what is expected to be an overnight now of 13. Goes well with the ‘noreaster we just had. A couple more good dumps and its call ’78 all over again. But let us see. Hadley assures me that this will be the warmest winter on record. Who am I to argue?
The only reason I got into this whole debate was to try and prove my brother was wrong to deny that co2 was destroying the planet. In trying to find evidence to back AGW as a matter of fact I converted myself into an evangelical skeptic! Now I hunt down and question every warmist I can get my hands on. I say well done to any individual that questions assumptions that at one stage were facts of a shameful, blameful truth! We have been raised to feel that we are destroying the planet and it is not easy to accept or even question that what we were told may be wrong. A G W is a lie but god knows it was painful for me to come to that conclusion. It was thanks to this site that I was able to make the
leap but I do wonder if such sites are enough to take the fight onto the streets? Say the word and I will march next to you onto parliament and make my voice heard above the leftist ecocentrics that scourge themselves with arrogant self rightiousness! We need to start the revolution and not just talk!! Mind you I have just got in from the pub. Merry Christmas all and a happy new year.
Divide and rule. Always seems to work. Find out what factors most agree on, dirty water and air are pretty high on the most undesirable list of things we want about us.
But, somehow, this agreement gets to become the argument that divides us into opposing factions!
Forget the fringe lunatics who inhabit both our worlds, we all want the same things emotionally. Happiness, achievement and a sense that those that come after us can feel at least as good as we’d hoped to be.
So why do we argue about those things we agree about? Is it because we fail to see that apparent opponents in one sphere share pretty much the same core values but in only slightly different ways?
Is it that the old propagandist trick of “god is on our side” versus “thus they are the spawn of Satan” is as effective in the 21st century as it was in the 11th century?
I suspect that it is. The motives and tactics of the past are as poweful now as they have always been.
Those that seek power are, thank whoever, are on the fringe but they do know which buttons need pressed and when!
Maybe it’s time to consolidate the forces of the majority of each side to show the dividers that it’s time to reject the hoary old button-pressers.
Or do we just let them rule over us again?
Glad to see Bradley and many others make the leap from believer to investigator. After studying the subject for thousands of hours, and reading hundreds of papers, I’m still dumbfounded that there are so many people out there that see something alarming in the science, when I still can’t find anything that looks unnatural or unprecedented. It is not unlike being in a bad episode of the twilight zone to see our politicians behave the way they do, oblivious to what the science actually says.
While the switch to a skeptical viewpoint is interesting and I thank Bradley for his article, it is not uncommon. The one unprecedented thing I am really looking for (and have been for years) is a skeptic that went alarmist.
Has there ever been a single documented case? I think that’s a very interesting and unique statistic.
Please let me know if you find anyone.
I really admire the posters who do not hesitate to brand some of these goings-on as “fraud.” I glory in their resolve. That’s far too adventurous for me, however. I’ve been involved in perhaps a hundred suits for defamation, from the liability insurance angle, and got burned more times than I like to think about. The thing about it is, the term “fraud,” in this context, can take on a rather technical definition. I frequently read the notion that one doesn’t really have to worry about defaming “public figures,” since they have the burden of proving “actual malice.” Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Until the judge defines “actual malice” as publishing something “with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity.” That presents a “material issue of fact,” to be resolved by the jury. In other words, it can be very difficult to get one of these cases “thrown out of court.” All of which is not to imply any legal competency on my part. I could easily be all wet. Still, I think it easy enough to get ones point across without indulging in questionable diction.
Well is there any other branch of “SCIENCE” that encompasses as many diciplines (or seems to) as does “Climate science” ?
It seems that we have everything from cosmologists and nuclear physicists, to botanists and zoologists, anthropologists and archeologists. Mathematicisans ans statisticians, and political scientists and economists. Epidemiiologists and psychologists, social scientists to behavioral psychologists, and on and on.
No wonder there are countless thousands of “climate scientists” who have a vested interest in some aspect of climate sicence. The marine biologists who has spent a lifetime studying a rare marine worm like maybe the pololo worm, and its habits and habitats; and s/hge knows that the pololo worm doesn’t reporduce if the water temperature is below 15.3 deg C or above 27.6 deg C. Maybe it’s because one sex likes it hot and the other likes it cold. Actually I think they are hermaphrodites or something weird. Some people study a fossil bacterium in ocean bottom mud cores, or maybe its a pollen from a rare tropical plant, that lives in the Amazon, that gets into the river water and floats out to sea.
All of these people probably feel they are making major contributions to science. I’ve no doubt that many of them are; just on the theory that there isn’t any such thing as too much knowledge.
But most of these diciplines can’t really have that much to do with the crux of climatology; is the earth’s climat changing in an un-natiral way, and are human activities involved (maybe) but in what way? Is it our misuse of the land, and the rape of tropical hardwood and rain forests; or is it our dirty atmospheric effluent habits; or is it an innocuous trace gas like CO2 that is an essential for life on planet earth.
To my mind; it is the Physicists and chemists who largely must address these questions; by proving the cause and effect relationships, that maybe statisticians, and data gatherers turn up.
I’m not happy with a model of the earth, that says the sun irradiates earth at 342 Watts per square meter 24/7, the model attributed to Trenberth, who is embarrassed that they can’t explain the cooling.
Well heck I would be embarrassed too if I was promoting a model that clearly isn’t in any way resembling this planet we live on. I see the sun at around four times the level that Trenberth sees, but my sun only illuminates about 52% or so of the planet at any one time; rather than the whole planet 100% of the time like Trenberth’s model planet.
An airless planet would be half illuminated by the sun at any time, well actually the sunlight would fall on about 181 degrees of the earth due to the 30 minute angular diameter of the sun. With our atmosphere, you now have bending due to the refractive index of air, which now bends the sunlight about one more degree around each edge so that something like 183 degrees is illuminated; Well of course morning and evening twilight add even further to that. But the sun never illuminates all of the planet at any one time, and the peak of that hemispherical illumination is four times what Trenberth says.
That is not inconsequential, since the irradiated portion then gets much hotter than in Trenberth’s model, and since the cooling LWIR emissions go as about the 4th power of the temperature, the real cooling rate is much higher than in Trenberth’s model.
Well it is really up to us hard scientists; the Physicists and chemists to put the real active mechanisms together; but I doubt that the biologists can be left out; there’s too much living stuff going on in the oceans, and the land greenery to leave the life sciences out of the picture.
But we don’t really need the political scientists, or epidemiologists and psychologists; they are just getting in the way. (i’m not expunging them; just thing they need to move out of climatology into more productive fields for their diciplines.
Now I’m a Physicist but I don’t work in this field; and probably nobody would pay me to do so. But I can at least try and make some of this palatable for those who are interested, but maybe aren’t equipped to conenct the dots.
I don’t see a whole lot of room under this tent; for anyone who has an agenda.
RE: Phil Clarke
I smell a rat. A big, fat, Commie lawyer rat!
Since we’re telling stories..
I was neutral on the whole thing a few years ago. I kept hearing the alarmists saying “Read the peer review literature”. Big mistake on their part, because that’s exactly what I did. I even bought subscriptions to some of the journals. In my mind it was pretty clear from reading these journals that the alarmists were making things up. I was convinced CO2 global warming was garbage and the scientists were lying even back then. But I didn’t really know just how bad things were until ClimateGate broke.
This isn’t fun for me at all. I can’t tell you how much I hate feeling compelled to have to make the videos I’ve made on the fraud in climate science. I really wish I lived in a world where that wasn’t needed.
Politically, I consider myself an independent. I’ve only cast two votes in my life, one for John Kerry and one for Obama. But both were really votes against George Bush. While I had a great deal of respect for McCain’s military service, I saw him as a continuation of Bush policies.
Obama is worse than Bush ever was. I’ll be sending him as many Republicans as I possibly can in the next election. At every level of government.
Here is another story of conversion. My own and the Democratic Party. I sent this to my local paper. It’s just a small rural paper but I wanted to speak to the difficult thing I did today.
12/22/09
To the Editor:
Today is a sad day for me. I have found it necessary to travel to the court house and change my party affiliation. My family has been a strong supporter of the Democratic Party going back many generations, from my grandfather’s hosting of Senator Wayne Morse’s final campaign swing through Wallowa County, to my great grandfather’s friendly, yet politically opposite relationship with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois. It has been an unbroken and significant piece of our family life till today.
Why this change? I cannot, in good conscience, continue to support a party whose rank and file politicians adhere to a cap and trade policy that will lead, and indeed already has, to loss of livelihood and abject poverty in undeveloped countries as companies seek carbon profits over jobs and wages.
When did the party I grew up with switch from regard for workers, and individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without discrimination to corporate greed at the expense of the common man trying to feed his starving children? When did we say it was okay to close factories so that carbon credits could be sold and profits spread among the already filled bellies of the rich?
So yes, I am sad today. I have removed myself from the political party I love, and that generations before me have loved. But on further thought, what I have done today is a deeply liberal thing, and I am proud to have done it.
Pamela Sue Gray
TerrySkinner (16:05:34) :
“For me being a liberal means being against capital punishment, in favour of gun control and universal health care and expecting everybody to contribute to society according to their means with the unfortunates of society being given a helping hand when necessary.
There is absolutely nothing about AGW which makes it a liberal issue. There is nothing about being a liberal which makes for tolerance of fraud and bogus science. There is nothing right wing or left wing about it.
So why are left/liberals groups and individuals continually looking to excuse the inexcusable?”
I agree that there’s nothing inherent in the science that makes this a left/right issue, but:
Green organizations have received enormous donations and benefactions in wills, which has given them traction,and then clout. There seems to be a tendency in many progressive organizations to get hijacked by their zanier elements.
So far environmentalism can claim a good record in improving things, and it has no obvious self-interested motivation to be malign or dishonest. That makes it hard for others in a party that aims at the greater good to oppose them.
Green activists are today the only large group willing to do the scut work of politics and ring doorbells, canvass by phone, put up signs, engage in “direct action,” etc. This makes them useful to parties.
And they are fearsome enemies in terms of energy and vitriol. To oppose them is to arouse the opposition of the PC cult generally.
And their terrific, professional persuasive campaign has won over many core Democratic voters — voters whom professional politicians must pay attention to.
And the enemy-Other the Greens invite Democrats to oppose is the traditional Democratic target: the uncaring, short-sighted, money-oriented business culture. On the other side of this coin, “being green” appeals to the “caring” /compassionate element in the Dem. party. (Caring about the planet, etc.)
Dems. identify with modernity, which means science — and science was packaged as being settled. The warmists made sure that any would-be scientific dissenters from the consensus got the message that they would pay a penalty for heresy.
Some Democrats have what P.J. O’Rourke called a camp-counselor mentality. They like to “play parent,” blow whistles, make people hop, and regulate things as a way of throwing their weight around and making Others toe the line.
(There must be more reasons — this is off the top of my head.)
All this has made greens and their CAWGism a vital element in the Democratic party’s coalition. Dems can’t afford to offend them or Nader (or some other Green candidate) will split off more votes in 2012.
Richard Feynman on Honesty in Science:
“It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. ”
Honest scientific papers acknowledge the opposition. Used car salesmen emphasize the good points and let the bad ones speak for themselves. Lately, “climate scientists” have had more in common with used car salesmen than with Feynman’s hypothetical honest scientists.
Phil Clark said:
“More detail, please. I am sure that you won’t object to me forwarding your allegations on to Professor Mann while we are waiting, and cross-posting this to RealClimate?”
Go for it Phil, please!
We would all like nothing more than to see everything come out in the discovery process. And it will all have to, or you would have no case.
So go for it buddy. I guarantee you, our pockets are deep enough.
George E. Smith (17:19:26) :
+1000
Oops, meant to say great-great grandfather. And yes, he and Lincoln would talk politics from time to time. My great-great grandfather was an active Democrat and politician who was much younger than Lincoln. Lincoln was known to gather together up and coming politicians from all political parties and share stories and jokes by the hearth.
BBC acknowledging The “Little Ice Age”?
“Many of us think of the Christmases of our youth as being snow-laden festivals of sledging and snowball fights.
But that may have more to do with romanticised notions old fashioned Christmases than anything we have lived through. The “Little Ice Age”, a period of global cooling that ran between about 1550 and 1850, meant white Christmases were not uncommon in centuries gone by. Its influence is still there in the classic literature of the time and traditional Christmas card designs.”
Is a white Christmas just a dream?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8424432.stm
seems like there is a trend there, some 10-15 years between “highs”
WWS:
“Anyone who look at this honestly I believe will be forced to come to the same conclusions that Bradley Fikes has, which is that nothing can be known for certain until the fraud is removed from the equations. *Nothing* is certain until that is done, and the people to blame for that are NOT the “skeptics” but rather are those scientists who abused their positions and caused the fraud. And anyone, and any organization, which refuses to acknowledge this must now be recognized as being complicit in the fraud, since it is too obvious now for “plausible denial” to be an excuse.”
“Group-think” must also be removed from the equation, which implies a two-year do-over of “the science” under the auspices of panels of independent scientific statesmen — preferably mostly retired.
TerrySkinner (16:05:34) :
To answer your question: AGW gives the excuse for the state to organize every aspect of people’s lives. This is the socialist Mecca.
I was spewing warmism 25 years ago, so I actually beat Al Gore to the punch. Not something I am particularly proud of, but it is what it is. I was a lot more impressionable and prone to utopian nonsense when I was in my late teens and early 20s.
I believed in global warming a little over a year ago and before. Today, I take the stance that we are coming out of the little ice age and maybe it’ll get cooler some years, maybe warmer on others, but overall the temperature is increasing and one day the ice age will be upon us.
So it’s no longer about being a believer or a denier. It’s more about “show me the data”. From that, let me make up my own mind.
To : George E. Smith
“But we don’t really need the political scientists, or epidemiologists and psychologists; they are just getting in the way. (i’m not expunging them; just thing they need to move out of climatology into more productive fields for their diciplines.”
And please, please, please, George. Don’t forget the economists.
It is interesting to read Fikes’ old stories. One of them dealt with an old dust-up between Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanuel about Emanuel’s hurrican work. It got me to thinking….you haven’t really heard word one about the hurricane stuff through the whole Climategate mess, even though it was among the most distorted in the popular press AGW discussion. THen it dawned on me as to the difference. Despite the obvious differences of opinions on the matter ALL of the relevant data is out in the open. Anything Emanuel or Lindzen (or Pielke or Landsea) does on the issue can be easily investigated, criticized, pulled apart, verified or disproven. Thus when Landsea made a very good argument that Emanuel was far too trusting on the early “Best Track” data, Emanuel had to adjust his thinking. (Not enough IMO, but burying his head in the sand wasn’t an option.)
Compare that situation with the work at CRU and the inaccesibility of that data, and I’m surprised more journalists aren’t feeling like they have been taken for a ride, like Fikes seems to be feeling.
Of course, I’m not counting those “journalists” who are more “interested party” than “watchdog of the people.”
Left right, left right. I have said it before and I’ll say it again science should not be about politics but observation, repeatability and facts.
Some left-wing sceptics for ya!
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
Left right, left right. I have said it before and I’ll say it again science should not be about politics but observation, repeatability and facts.
Having said that ;-o some left-wing sceptics for ya!
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
NPR tonight in NY City, WNYC is in full alarmist mode. They are rehashing Cop, have guests on air from NRDC and some 350 carbon organization, and are taking calls. In standard all knowing tone, I hear one of them say massive demonstrations were a key part of getting their agenda accepted. He says activism will remain key for the future. I do not watch Fox News. I don’t care for it. Regarding Rush Limbaugh, I’ve listened to him regularly since 1989. He has spoken of AGW more in recent weeks, of course, but in recent years his coverage wasn’t his opinion but presentation of news stories about it. One story he read on the air was even from the AP by 2 reporters explaining how carbon offset money was being spent on hydro projects in that country. In short, China is a disaster. The reporters stuck to reporting events there, how money goes through the United Nations via CDM, how much of it is misspent or siphoned off. Did not get into whether or not AGW existed per se, and Rush presented it the same way.
@ Bradley J. Fikes (16:51:59) :
“Wow . . . is all I can say after reading the comments. These are some amazing stories of confronting the science. ”
Be aware that your new found skepticism will likely carry over into other areas of your life. This is a good thing, but like anything else can be overdone. Also be careful that you are not just swapping one belief system for another. Skepticism is a way of thinking about assertions and evidence, not just a dismissal of a (prior) belief.
George E. Smith (17:19:26) :
Well is there any other branch of “SCIENCE” that encompasses as many diciplines (or seems to) as does “Climate science” ?
It seems that we have …
—————————————-
Sir, one of the reasons that I come to this site is because of your input!
It’s not the only one but it is important, to me and I suspect for others also.
For what it is worth you have been, proven wrong, on hens teeth singularities but have always cheerfully conceded your propensity to the odd mistake or three!
You’re not always the easiest to understand but you do come over as a bloke what knows!
Thanks Mr S..
@Phil Clark:
I agree that ‘outright fraud’ is too strong a term, and that by putting “dirty laundry” in quotes Mann signaled was talking about material that only “looked bad” at first glance. (Or anyway that’s the charitable view of that material that he’d talked himself into.) “Our side” should not take roundhouse swings and open itself to counterpunches.
———
“Please be specific, which published theory in which papers was contradicted by these data? What exactly do the data show?”
I’m not sure if the following is relevant to whatever it was that Mann was being coy about, but I’d like to remind people of it anyway, because it belies the team’s spin that McIntyre was a mere pest. Several months ago WUWT commenter Allan MacRae said:
“As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.”
“Michael (17:39:45) :
BBC acknowledging The “Little Ice Age”?
”
Richard Black had a hard time in Copenhagen; he’s probably in vacation and can’t doublecheck everything now i guess…
I like most people. started out looking at those unbelievable graphs of warming, saying “Did we do this?” So I started to read and I started to monitor changes in seasons and the temperatures where I live. We did have a few nice years. I bought a fan in 05 because it was warm. I used it 3 times and then once in 06. I have not used it since. I do not and will never have a/c.
I wondered why 98 was called such a warm year. For all the warmth of 2005 and 2006, I have used more heating fuel every year since 1997. Are the winters that much colder? For the past two years, I have used more heating fuel than ever before as the furnace has been off 3 weeks of the past 2 summers. And yet the graphs still go up? I think the IPCC jumped the shark when they came out with the hockey stick graph. I know there was a Medieval Warm Period and I know there was a Little Ice Age. Humans have drawings of both those times. I could not believe that this was all made up and that our politian’s knew it and were still going to increase the price of electricity and heating fuel. After Climate gate, this is a certainty. I am disgusted with both the climate scientists and our elected officials. The IPCC should be disbanded and any elected official who speaks about global warming, climate change, cap and trade or carbon tax should never receive another vote. The climate scientists involved should be terminated from their position and jailed.
As punishment for your dismissal of skeptics, you must use a hide the decline ringtone for 3 months.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/hide-the-decline-ringtones/
Every time I hear it, it brings a smile. II is the best one.
Pamela Gray (17:28:41) :
I’m sorry for your sadness. I’ve read your posts on many occasions. They are usually concise and well thought. In this country, sadly, it has become a party issue. Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. I have, for a very long time, aligned myself with the republicans. It seems a misnomer, but they, more often than dems(in my view), in recent years, tend more to give the individual more freedoms than the dems. It wasn’t always so. The line is blurred. The issues complex. The individual marginalized.
Freedom is earned, so is money. Yet, capitalist capitalize. And freedom is a right. But, it should not be so at the expense of one’s ability to achieve and excel.
One day, if I achieve my dream, someone, will be able to articulate the distinctions and the benefits of a free and capitalist society. Years ago, it would not have been deemed necessary.(In my mind, we have to re-invent the wheel.) No Utopia exists, nor, will it ever, nor, I believe, should it ever, in the world we live in. One day, it will.
Climate Change Alliance Crumbling
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
Many, many of us have a similar path.
Welcome back to reality!
The WHOLE East Anglia University site is down. That seems strange
Jay, you said that Fox and Rush are the only ones highlighting the real issues on climategate, but “sadly in their own fear-promoting way.”
I hope you understand that during all these years that the New York Times, Time Magazine, the nations school system, all the networks, all of the main stream media…. were promoting the ‘potential end of mankind’ from manmade global warming…… it was Fox and Rush that were seeing it more calmly and clearly…how you could call THEM the fearmongers is how brainwashed you were about the whole thing…..
you have one more level of cleansing before you are cleansed of your brainwashed liberal background….but calling Fox and Rush the fearmongers when they were the voices of reason….after all, the EU had started converting much of their land to growing fuel to burn instead of food (corn) to stop a nonexistent threat…imagine that, burning the worlds food supply in a panic unnecessarily…and it was Fox and Rush saying ‘now wait a minute guys’….
“Michael (18:36:47) :
Climate Change Alliance Crumbling
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
”
Ahem…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=0
Phil Clarke (16:08:26) :
Michael Mann could not afford the process servers to serve all the people who have called him a fraud in public.
Did you ask him if it was OK to pseudo-threaten people on here with your lame post ??
Remember that CFC ban has harmed people. In developing counties, people now have no refrigeration. They had an old refrigerator but now cannot get freon for it. My fridge is old and uses freon. When it breaks I will have to replace it as I cannot have it repaired. I can do that, people in developing countries cannot.
Another example of environmentalists acting before the science was settled.
The writing is now on the wall.
“Leftist Feel Good” Carbon Prices Fall In Wake of Copenhagen
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:09d065a209d9d6ef6775afa0544392ff:2a4db4af4f2f4abeba7b12b153e963fd/Leftist-Feel-Good-Carbon-Prices-Fall-In-Wake-of-Copenhagen
A comment left by “Cam” on that website says
“I’ve actually tracked the origins of the CO2 theory back to a 1974 UN population conference in Romania and later the “Endangered Atmosphere” conference in the US a year later, where a series of sociologists (led by the anthropologist Margaret Mead) worked with a small group of climate scientists (led by Bill Kellogg) to fabricate a theory around CO2 influencing temperature (it’s in the conference proceedings!), in order to implement a global goverance model based on energy. There was even a form of ‘cap and trade’ discussed at the conference! It was intentionally fabricated and immediately integrated into UN policy. The birth of the IPCC occurred quitely behind the scenes at this conference. Extraordinary story.”
The problem is that I can’t find these proceedings online. in fact, the link to go to the official website is broken on this page http://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/population.shtml
However, if one googles (better yet, bings) “UN population conference Romania 1974” many links are found with many quotes allegedly from this conference but nothing to a copy of a report that may have come out of this conference. Can anyone help?
Roger Knights:
“Green organizations have received enormous donations and benefactions in wills, which has given them traction,and then clout. There seems to be a tendency in many progressive organizations to get hijacked by their zanier elements.”
Roger, in no way to lessen the monumental nature of what we are currently witnessing, don’t you think that these tendencies are found in comparable social movements across the board?
Zanier elements…Civil Rights from around 1965?
Funding and zanier elements…the Religious Right from the 90s?
Perhaps, like the climate, there is a cycle here: when at rare maturity it’s a powerful vortex draws in more and more energy…only to eventually smash itself (and a lot else) to smithereens.
…but then you wake up and, hey, the landscape has changed forever – in ways that you could only have guessed at, but never have fully predicted.
This is no green thing, no left-side thing – these vortex are found in both (social) hemispheres, they just rotate in opposite ways. And in themselves they are not all bad…or good. And there is not always such a catastrophic ending, but, according to my computer model, this is a Katrina, and it is only just now made landfall.
They also said on local NPR affiliate tonight re the future, we will have to be ‘lucky about the science.’ Said their biggest problem isn’t the republicans but physics, said something about how information is interpreted. Perhaps the show is archived on WNYC as I didn’t get the details of what he meant about physics. He wasn’t advocating fraud, but was an interesting view.
Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
As a former trumpeter of the AGW theory myself, I completely understand… I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.
Maybe you should rethink how you view NPR too.
Bradley,
I too was convinced of the validity of the AGW hypothesis for some time. As a medical research scientist, I am able to sort real science from unsubstantiated claims. I’ve read many of the abstracts and IPCC reports and saw major discrepancies in what was in the literature vs. what was being sold to the public.
My defining experience that led me towards identifying myself as a skeptic was when I went to some of the pro-AGW sites (one of them being RealClimate) and asked a few sincere critical questions. Wow! I was shocked that most of my questions didn’t make it past the moderators. The few times a question got through, I felt like a bone thrown to wild dogs. I found that they can’t handle critical questions nor do they encourage honest scientific inquiry. Their purpose is to carefully compose the dialog to put a science face on a patent ideology.
I happened upon WUWT and CA following a web article and found an open group of other scientists, engineers, and critical thinking individuals from many walks of life who had the same questions as I. I found they would take the time to explain the issues and provide excellent on-line resources. Not being a climatologist, I’m sure I’ve asked a few ignorant questions which have been graciously forborne by the more knowledgeable that comment here. Having a better balanced opportunity to weigh the arguments of both sides, I find the science of AGW to be unsupportive of the apocalyptic and dreadful claims being made by AGW activists.
I’m pleased to see that your asking critical questions has taken you on the same journey as many of us. Here you’ll find a good mix of individuals who, like you, are truly concerned about sorting the science from the hype. You’re in good company. I hope to hear more of your thoughts in the future.
Kirls (19:03:59) :
I feel like Steve McIntyre. I am speechless.
Hi folks!
Phil Clarke followed me to my blog with his intimidation tactics, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I knew what the response would be from people who aren’t used to being challenged. Here is my response:
———————————-
Phil,
When a scientist deliberately withholds data from skeptics that puts his research into bad light, that is fraudulent science. The evidence is Mann’s own email, not only stating that he had “dirty laundry”, but urging his colleague to keep it confidential. He admitted it!
The fraud lies in deliberately misrepresenting the scientific evidence. It was not an innocent mistake, by Mann’s own choice of words and instructions to keep the information from skeptics. That reflects knowledge Mann was doing something wrong. I don’t know why this is so hard for you to understand.
As for how much of the research has been tainted, I’ll have to wait and see the results of the university’s investigation, assuming it’s rigorous. I have to wonder if there are other instances where Mann has concealed “dirty laundry” from skeptical examination.
But at least we know Mann thought the hockey stick residuals included “red” data (didn’t accord with expected results) and that this was “dirty laundry”. As Steve McIntryre states:
The Mann et al 1998-99 reconstruction had “steps” (grandiosely called “experiments” by Mann), but the results of the individual steps were never archived, only the splice of 11 steps. For statistical analysis, one needs to have the residuals, which we requested in 2003. Mann refused.
So for skeptical inspection of the results, the residuals were needed, but Mann refused. He confidentially told a colleague the residuals were “dirty laundry” and to be kept confidential lest skeptics get it. This is contrary to the norms of scientific practice, in which all the evidence, pro and con, is to be considered. Deliberately concealing “dirty laundry” means Mann violated that norm intentionally.
You may not think that is scientific fraud, but I sure do. Perhaps you need to recalibrate your ethics.
————————————————–
And as I’ve tried to make clear, I am no “denialist” on AGW. I tend to think there is probably some AGW. However, the evidence as to how much is far from conclusive, and moreover it has been tainted by the fraud, deception and bad science revealed in Climategate. The burden of proof is on those who propose a theory. And when fraud and misconduct is revealed at the heart of AGW science community, it’s not intellectually respectable to ignore it or minimize it. First, we must know how far the rot has gone, and not just pretend it’s business as usual.
We need to do a full scrub of the climate science, with the skeptics involved and not shut out. The bad scientists should be exiled from the field and their tainted research withdrawn. Then we’ll have a better idea just how much was really science and how much was politics and deceit.
[REPLY – Hear! Hear! And welcome. ~ Evan]
Michael (17:39:45
‘BBC acknowledging The “Little Ice Age”? ……Is a white Christmas just a dream?’
I wonder If BBC ever heard of Charles Dickens?
‘I’ve always said there’s nothing an agnostic can’t do, if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in anything or not’ – Palin ??
The data is the same on both sides of the issue. That hasn’t changed. Looking at what skeptics said, their case, their data, didn’t open this guys eyes. Apparently data (science) isn’t what makes some people believers or not. It’s about their paradigm, how they view people, how they view the world.
Once this guy saw shady dealings on his side he changed his side. The science didn’t change him. And the science hasn’t changed.
This is why I think most believers in America are Democrats—because they go with Al Gore, a Democrat. They don’t care about the science. And they don’t care about the cooling climate right now. They makes excuses for both the science ate the climate when they don’t align with Al Gore.
Cult of personality.
Where the Global warming Hoax Was Born
http://www.twine.com/_b/download/11gckb4jj-6g/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/11gckb4jj-6g/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/Where_the_Global_Warming_Hoax_Was_Born.pdf
Global Warming English for Genocide
@ bruce (18:50:26) : Speaking of burning food, there’s been an ongoing series of articles and such on Progressive Farmer regarding biofuels, land use, and related topics that are of interest to farmers. Farmers are one of the groups that are most impacted by changes to Ag laws, taxes, etc that are being driven by a belief in climate change, CO2, cap and trade etc. http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/ . Read some of the past blog posts on ethanol, etc. and the pressure being put on the farming community to accept various proposals from USDA.
…..I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you wanna be ohhh…
Neon lights, Nobel Prize
When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You won’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free…
I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face of your T.V. ohh…
I’m the Cult of Personality…
I exploit you; still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three ohh…
I’m the Cult of Personality….
You gave me fortune, you gave me fame
You gave me power in your God’s name
I’m every person you need to be ohh…
The author hasn’t learned a thing. He’s jumped from one blind conclusion to another with no fundamental understanding to the science behind either position. He’s the classic “leaf in the wind”. He responds to his “impressions” rather than to any appreciation of fact. He is the ultimate sucker. He does not count for anything in the tally for truth. He is cannon fodder.
CH
AdderW (13:59:41) :
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932.
science was settled on that, so nuclear power plants were never built.
There are a lot of things attributed to Einstein floating about on the net that are not so, but if he did say such a thing the irony is that he and Leo Szilard held the original patent on the nuclear reactor.
Believing in co2 warming I planted hundreds of trees along the railway line. Then I read Dr David Evans article on the ‘Missing Hotspot’ and decided to look at the date for myself. Climate debate daily put me on to Anthony and Steve McIntyre. Revelation and relief. Two years on, a committed sceptic, I still plant trees along the railway line.
Phil Clarke (16:08:26) :
How are you handling an early start to winter in Europe and the US for a third year in a row?
Kirls (19:03:59) :
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
See if you can spot the plea for the perversion of science in support of an agenda.
Phil Clarke (16:08:26) :
You are levelling an accusation of outright fraud against Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University for the withholding of evidence. Is that correct?
Answering to this ‘accusation’ is something Michael Mann may have to do under oath some day.
photon without a Higgs
Once this guy saw shady dealings on his side he changed his side. The science didn’t change him. And the science hasn’t changed.
The science didn’t change, but the credibility of those I trusted on the science changed. Remember, I am a mere ink-stained wretch, not a scientist. Beyond a certain point, I have to trust the scientists. What I found in the Climategate emails was evidence of deceit. What I thought I knew, I didn’t know. So for me, the science changed.
I’ll try to carry this lesson over to other areas of science.
re to Michael (19:20:18)
I had found that website and that document but do you know where to find the original report on the 1974 UN Conference in Romania or to the 1975 Conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina?
Jack Straw, thank you as well. I had indeed found that article. I’m hoping we can find the original report(s). In 1974, I’m sure they were paper only. I might have to make a trip to the county library for this one. They put things on fiche way back then iirc.
Hunter,
you were lucky that William Cionnelly did not find the book referece you mentioned and edit it too.
Kirls (20:15:00) : Wrote
re to Michael (19:20:18)
“I had found that website and that document but do you know where to find the original report on the 1974 UN Conference in Romania or to the 1975 Conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina?”
This may help;
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5912823
“A story of conversion: Global Warming Believer to Skeptic.” This headline is at least partly a misnomer.
The original article concludes: “And until climate science is cleaned up, it doesn’t deserve the worship so many in the media unthinkingly give its tainted practitioners.”
This claim is not scepticism, which involves the withholding of judgment. It is advocacy. The writer has clearly made up his mind that fraud has occurred, and appears to have skipped from one position of advocacy to its opposite.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with advocacy. But advocacy is not scepticism.
Bradley J. Fikes (20:13:22) :
When I say ‘science’ I am not talking about what Briffa, Mann, Santer, Jones, et al, did.
I am talking about what Soon, Balluinas, Spencer, Lindzen, Svensmark, et al, are doing. That science hasn’t changed.
Kirls (20:15:00) : Wrote
re to Michael (19:20:18)
“I had found that website and that document but do you know where to find the original report on the 1974 UN Conference in Romania or to the 1975 Conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina?”
Could this be what you are looking for? I’m trying to find a free copy.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B757C-48CFVTT-1RP&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1144720771&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f39d3c0da7b9af226dedde39c3ecae38
Richard Feynman: “Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.”
Phil Jones: “I know why he can’t replicate the results early on – it is because there was a variance correction for fewer series.”
(http://www.climate-gate.org/cru/mail/1114607213.txt)
Just comparing Nobel Laureates thoughts.
Bradley J. Fikes (20:13:22) :
What I found in the Climategate…
ClimateGate has changed everything.
I know you’re new here—and I’m happy to see you here myself—but if you had been here for some time in the the past you would see that most global warming believers that posted comments here are gone.
Phil Clarke is one of the very few that has stayed. But his comments are few now. I wonder if he is the Phil Clarke from this web site:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/771266064
Al Gore could come out of this a hero.
He simply has to declare that the IPCC misled him, AGW is a fraud and that it is now settled.
“The vast majority of people have neither the skills or education to really know what is going on. That is what makes people like Al Gore truly despicable — He knows he is playing on people’s ignorance.”
You do not Invent the Internet, win a Noble, and win an Oscar by being stupid.
Bradley J. Fikes (19:14:30) :
I also welcome you to our dark cabal. Your public statements deserve the praise you have received.
I’m much more strident than most here. AGW in my estimation is a complete fraud concocted for purely political reasons. And I’ve yet to be shown an evidence to the contrary.
You’ve come a long way. Imagine how far you have yet to travel.
Re: Flint (17:12:40)
I am also reluctant to call it fraud unless and until the “fudge factors” and other insertions into the derived temperature record are shown properly and scientifically unjustified. But it looks and smells very bad.
But I will call the behaviour of most of the Hockey Team as wilful scientific misconduct of a type that takes my breath away, and I’m not easily winded.
Here’s a scary read;
The New Environmentalists Eugenics:
Al Gore’s Green Genocide
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-13/pdf/36-46_713_ainsworth.pdf
[REPLY – Best be careful, Michael. I find myself compelled to take LaRouche with a very hefty grain of salt.]
If you are feeling ambitious, open up Pandora’s box called Agenda 21.
I have been a skeptic all along. First it was pure prejudice: The same dang people with the same dang solution for yet another fill-in-the-blank reason. Been there, done that. I expected it would blow over in a few years like all the rest.
But instead it went viral. So I started to look more closely into the evidence. And a skeptic (of the lukewarming variety) I have remained. I did think the manipulations, etc., however, were more subconscious than not — until the emails and Poor Harry’s Almanac!
Bradley J. Fikes (15:02:10) :
Do you even know what it is that you claim he’s withholding?
[REPLY – Best be careful, Michael. I find myself compelled to take LaRouche with a very hefty grain of salt.]
Me very, too, but that report is an eye opener, check out the footnotes.
Sorry, footnote #2 in this report,
“The only opposition to the Rockefeller/Club of Rome Policy presented at the Bucharest conference came from Helga-Zepp La Rouche.”
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
Nick Stokes,
Hockey stick data.
This claim is not scepticism, which involves the withholding of judgment. It is advocacy. The writer has clearly made up his mind that fraud has occurred, and appears to have skipped from one position of advocacy to its opposite.
The evidence of fraud, playing favorites, shutting out skeptics from the peer review process, etc, is right in the Climategate emails and documents. Most of this is in rather plain English, and doesn’t need scientific elaboration.
And I have not gone to any position of advocacy; indeed I retain an open mind about AGW. I just want the fraud and bad science cleared out. That is a properly skeptical attitude in the wake of such a revelation.
photon without a Higgs
When I say ’science’ I am not talking about what Briffa, Mann, Santer, Jones, et al, did.
I am talking about what Soon, Balluinas, Spencer, Lindzen, Svensmark, et al, are doing. That science hasn’t changed.
And my views on that science haven’t changed. I regard what Svensmark has found, for example, to be an interesting hypothesis but still in need of more confirmation. I wrote about this before Climategate, and I still think it’s true. The only difference is much that I assumed to be true about AGW is not reliable because of the bad acting of major scientists.
Bradley J. Fikes (21:44:53) :
Hockey stick data.
Well, that’s pretty broad. But it isn’t data, it’s a calculated result – residuals. And they’re red. That doesn’t make them wrong, and Mann clearly seems to think there is good reason why they should be red. He’s happy to pass them on to Osborn, and he doesn’t say they should be kept secret, only to check with him before passing them on to others (which is pretty normal good manners anyway).
It’s clear what he’s worried about is another “auditing” by McI, a self-appointed auditor. The probable reason is that dealing with that takes time and trouble, and a great deal of invective is directed his way. He’s under no obligation to facilitate that process.
I’d remind you, BTW, that you have here only a fragment of Mann’s email, as quoted by Osborn. He may well go on to explain in more detail why he thinks the file should not be sent to McI.
re: Michael (20:44:46) yes, thank you!
i see some people mentioning their personal stories of having believed AGW or not. So … i never believed cAGW. in fact, i doubt that humans have any influence on the climate of our planet. i won’t believe it until i see proof in the form of repeatable, verifiable experiments (and that includes unaltered data!).
Steve Oregon (20:54:06) :
Al Gore could come out of this a hero.
He simply has to…
Everyone would know he’s trying to save his own skin. Wouldn’t work.
I, like many others, started out somewhat centrist and skeptical in the entire AGW debate. While it was easy to feel emotionally swayed by the empassioned pleas of the green supporters of AGW, as soon as more and more alarmist stories came out (ice caps disappearing soon, increased hurricanes, drought, etc) I was inclined to do a bit of research.
Common sense told me from the start… with all this talk of tipping points, why had this not happened before? Indeed, why were we alll alive and discussing this today? I can never get past the argument that the earth has previously gone through cycles of both temperature and CO2 concentrations far outside the current experience and somehow runaway warming (or cooling) never occured… why not?
My simplistic gut feeling is that the earth´s systems have a natural tendancy to buffer temperature swings. My intuitive guess was always that the oceans were that buffer. Seems like common sense to me. But somehow the IPCC was persisting with the “act now or we are all doomed tomorrow” line of debate on CO2.
Anywho… I ended up at sites like these, and saw that the science was far from settled, and that there are a lot more questions about climate than answers.
Sadly the”situation is normal, nothing to see” story does not sell newspapers. That´s why I am thankful for ClimateGate as it brings that element of excitement that attracts the press, but brings people back into the skeptical mind set of not accepting the IPCC AGW agenda as gospel.
evanmjones (21:18:26) :
I have been a skeptic all along.
Me too, only I’ve vehemently opposed the proposition. Not because I knew the science was bad. (We all knew that.) But because the extrapolation was horrible. If the proposition of AGW was true, then……. fill in the blank. Ask yourselves, what laws have we already invoked to thwart the “inevitable doom” of AGW? What hardships have we imposed on our fellow man to keep ourselves safe from the terrible AGW?? It is not good enough to say to ourselves, “I didn’t believe it. I tried to sway them in a different direction.”. How many people have died because we allowed the AGW theory to persist? All the while knowing, it was a hoax?
To all those people posting here (whether calling themselves liberal or not) who proclaim the “bias” of Fox News, how do you explain why the liberal media (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, etc.) are not covering Climategate, and not offering views from scientists who disagree with AGW???
I think CNN was dragged partially on board a couple weeks after Climategate broke due only to the critical mass of the story, but do you have an example of a prior report that presented a balance between warmists and skeptics? I’ve looked around and I haven’t seen it. In the days after Climategate broke the rare MSM mentions I found made zero mention of the content of the material and instead instantly parroted the CYA lines of the CRU and others involved.
It doesn’t just happen that Fox is covering this fairly (as is a Russian TV station). Fox is indeed fair and balanced. Did you know they have more liberal contributors than conservative? Have you actually watched a few weeks of Fox coverage and then checked them for bias or omissions like the liberal media? Many organizations (third party, including a group at Harvard, which is certainly not conservative) have done this, by the way, and the Fox coverage gets the highest marks for balance.
Yes Beck and Hannity are conservative (and not part of the pure news shows), but fact check their Climategate coverage. See if you find anything inaccurate or taken out of context. If you do find something legit I’ll bet they correct it on air.
If you think the climate bias you are seeing in the MSM is limited just to climate you are sadly mistaken. If you’ve been getting all of your news from liberal sources such as CNN for years and you’ve bought into it, Fox may seem very slanted to you, but that’s your own bias. I strongly suggest you read the book ‘Bias’ by Bernard Goldberg, and he happens to be a Democrat.
It’s great that people like Bradley have had their eyes opened by Climategate. Many others here who are knowledgeable about AGW but somehow think that the MSM is not covering it for some benign reason need to rethink things, and perhaps need to start extrapolating to other issues to see what other key news they’re not getting.
@Bradley J. Fikes (21:53:30) :
On the Svensmark thing, your are correct it is a hypothesis and most sceptics take it as such not as proven fact, however what you might not have noticed or not have tied together is that the CERN CLOUD experiment is ongoing right now testing the foundation of that hypothesis: Does Cosmic Rays produce Clouds? From what CERN says they will have prelimenary results next year. If you haven’t seen this you might be interested, it is the presentaion for the experiment done by Dr. Japer Kirkby:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
Oh how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Agenda 21 For Dummies
Kevin Kilty (19:46:24) :
“… the irony is that he and Leo Szilard held the original patent on the nuclear reactor.
I don’t think so. Sizilard patented the concept of the chain reaction in 1933. I have never read anywhere that his former mentor Einstein had anything to do with it. I cannot vouch for the quote by AdderW (13:59:41), as I can only find it at Wikiquote, where it is said to have been published in the Pittsburgh Gazette in 1934. If so, it would appear he was probably unaware of his former student’s inspiration, which would be reasonable, since Szilard immediately saw the implications of his idea in making weapons of war, and pleaded with the British Government to keep it secret.
Maybe you were thinking of the Einstein-Szilard refrigerator?
Here is a nice Einstein quote which the panjandrums to Copenhagen should perhaps consider:
Incidentally, the first artificial nuclear reactor was constructed by Szilard and Fermi in 1942.
Nick Stokes (22:17:39) :
“The probable reason is that dealing with that takes time and trouble…
Bollocks. If they need a full time staff member to respond to inquiries, they can hire an ombudsman.
“…and a great deal of invective is directed his way.”
The invective is because he has been refusing to share his data. This is like the proverbial kid who killed his parents pleading for leniency on account of his being an orphan.
“He’s under no obligation to facilitate that process.”
Yes, he is. That, my friend, is Science. Openness, sharing, and replication are what it is all about.
Bart (22:58:50) :
That, my friend, is Science.
No, it’s auditing. And auditing, if done, needs to have a structure. Imagine if anyone could claim the right to audit your tax returns. If you had a few enemies, you’d be doing nothing else.
Scientists have ways of interacting that doesn’t include barrages of FOI requests and the general snarling that goes on at CA and WUWT. Not to mention publication of private emails. You may be able to force scientists to do it your way, but you can’t expect them to enthusiastically volunteer.
Bradley J Fikes: “And I have not gone to any position of advocacy; indeed I retain an open mind about AGW. I just want the fraud and bad science cleared out. That is a properly skeptical attitude in the wake of such a revelation.”
The properly sceptical attitude is to withhold judgement. You have made a judgement that fraud has occurred, and you have urged that “the fraud and bad science [be] cleared out”.
Your views on the science are irrelevant to the issue of the behaviour of the scientists. On that issue you have taken a position, and are urging the adoption of a certain course of action. That’s advocacy.
“Einstein on smashing atoms at will and predictions of manned flight reminds me of the alleged prediction by T.J.Watson, founder of IBM that there would ever only be a market for five computers. This quote is disputed, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson ”
You cite Wikipedia! There should be a new version of Godwin’s law – first to cite the Wiki loses….
But seriously, I have some sympathy for whoever suggested that the world market for computers would be small. I think they were right. You see, they were NOT talking about PCs or micros at the time – they were talking about large super-computer number-crunchers.
Even today, when prices have dropped astoundingly, the market for these is miniscule. I suppose most countries in the world would still be quite happy with 5 of these number-crunchers – they are really only used for complex fluid dynamics simulation such as weather or nuclear bomb design….
The truth about “carbon” taxes
If anyone was in any doubt about the ability of Governments to latch onto any excuse to raise taxes, even based on the massive “global warming” fraud, here is a convincing example from the Britain’s ability to tax air passengers.
Return fare from London to Los Angeles: £365
£46 for the fare
£319 in taxes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/air-passenger-duty/6867584/Ryanair-passengers-forced-to-lick-ice-cubes-is-bad—but-air-travel-is-going-to-get-worse.html
In a year when the airline industry has made record $11 billion losses, British airlines think that upping their ancillary revenues (extra charges) is the way to tempt passengers back: BA has joined the low-cost bandwagon by charging for second bags and pre-booked seats, some airports now charge people to drop of passengers or even pass through security gates, while the Government has got in on the act by raising Air Passenger Duty (APD) at a time when other European countries have abandoned their equivalent taxes. We have reached the ludicrous situation where by next year the average £365 return fare from London to Los Angeles will see passengers pay £319 in taxes and £46 for the fare.
No wonder then that more than half of Telegraph readers said this week that they have been put off traveling abroad during the festive period next year. Have we reached the nadir for air travel in this country? Probably not. The Government plans to raise APD again next November.
I suggest we change the word “Denialist” to “Realist”. That puts the monkey back on the AGWers as being outside the realm of reality, which is truly the case.
We can take the moral high ground by calling ourselves Global Warming Realists, or Climate Change Realists. Our quest is for honest-to-goodness information and the utilization of unadulterated scientific methodology. It’s time our name reflected our views.
Brendan H, that’s a ridiculous assertion. You would have everyone sit around zen like saying “I don’t know, no one knows, no one should do anything because action is an assertion of knowing and I do not know, ohhhhmmmm”
We have the evidence of the deliberate hiding and destruction of data. As Brandon has pointed out, that is prima facie evidence of fraud on someone’s part. Just who and how much they are personally responsible, we don’t know yet and that’s what requires investigation. But what Brandon has said is absolutely correct – nothing can be known until the fraud and bad science is cleared out. And that clearing out must begin immediately.
Nick Stokes – very BAD analogy!!! You claim that revealing data is like “auditing tax returns” – how openly you show your complete lack of understanding of the scientific method!!! You speak like an apparatchik or an accountant, not as a scientist. (Which leads to a suspicion I’ve long had, is that true scientists are very scarce in the AGW ranks)
A tax return is something only done to fulfill the requirements of a legal structure, and as with all legal documents it is subject to laws concerning privacy. A tax return is *never* filled out to advocate mass changes in government policy, or to argue for a completely new world structure which would supercede other citizens rights!
Science done well is *dependant* on the immediate dissemination of all data and the willingness to see that all data and it’s related theories are strongly tested by all comers, *especially* those who have nothing to do with the original project. Only after it stands up to such an assault should it even begin to hope to become widely accepted.
Warmists are wishing for an Alice in Wonderland world where they get to play the Red Queen and shriek “Sentence First!!! Verdict Afterwards!!!!”
Science doesn’t work that way, as all true scientists know.
@ Alan D McIntire (17:32:24)
Thanks for quoting Feynman. I miss his values, and passion for science these days. 🙁
Einstein had little to do with it, true, but Szilard put his name to it just the same. I think I have seen the patent in Physics Today many years ago.
Bart (22:43:21) :
You may be correct. I might have been thinking of the refrigerator patent. I recall reading that Szilard was concerned that Einstein never seemed to look out for his interests financially and so put Einstein’s name to patents he had little to do with. However, if the quote is accurate, then it is still ironic that Einstein’s mentee held such patent.
Your views on the science are irrelevant to the issue of the behaviour of the scientists. On that issue you have taken a position, and are urging the adoption of a certain course of action. That’s advocacy.
I don’t quite get your point. The behavior is wrong, wrong wrong. It impeaches the credibility of the research they’re involved in. That’s why we need to bring in skeptics and outsiders. That is not “advocacy”, that is common sense. The advocates are the ones saying Climategate doesn’t affect the evidence for AGW and move along, nothing to see.
Nick,
Scientists have ways of interacting that doesn’t include barrages of FOI requests and the general snarling that goes on at CA and WUWT. Not to mention publication of private emails. You may be able to force scientists to do it your way, but you can’t expect them to enthusiastically volunteer.
From all I can tell, most of the “snarling” has been done by the Climategate people. You can see it in the emails.
Judith Curry had a great suggestion for scientists who don’t want to be hassled with providing data: Put everything on the Web so anyone can inspect the raw data, intermediate steps, etc. Voila! No more FOIA hassles.
Phil Clarke (16:08:26) :
Deliberately withholding evidence that goes against your theory in published research is scientific fraud.
Fair enough. So let us be absolutely careful, clear and specific. You are levelling an accusation of outright fraud against Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University for the withholding of evidence. Is that correct?
Please be specific, which published theory in which papers was contradicted by these data? What exactly do the data show?
Please confirm that you wish to make a serious and highly public accusation of scientific fraud against Professor Mann, in the knowledge that it will almost certainly be defamatory if you cannot provide adequate supporting evidence.
Note that Professor Mann did not actually withhold anything, he provided some data to a colleague and asked that he be consulted before those data were shared more widely. In my opinion, given the absurd distortions that some are prepared to indulge in this seems to me more indicative of sensible precautions than fraud.
More detail, please. I am sure that you won’t object to me forwarding your allegations on to Professor Mann while we are waiting, and cross-posting this to RealClimate?
So, Mr. Clarke, is this you? Assuming it is, I see two areas you specialize in are
Carbon Credits and Climate Change. This would certainly explain your rather zealous interest here. Meanwhile, we anxiously await your responses from Mann and your buds over at RC. Since we know how interested in the truth they all are, and all……
chirrup-chirrup-chirrup…
It’s over buddies….but they will use now other weapons instead: NGO’s, human rights, etc. until, finally, all these organizations end…leaving a lot of “collateral damage” behind…
perhaps on the 21st. of december of 2021, who knows ☺☺
wws (05:43:07) : Spot on. Nick is pushing a false analogy.
Nick Stokes (00:25:14) :
“…but you can’t expect them to enthusiastically volunteer.”
I certainly do! Unequivocally and emphatically. It is de rigeur. It is sine qua none.
How in the world did you ever get such a twisted view of Science? This is what Science is all about. If one does not like it, one should not engage in the scientific professions.
The bad thing about the whole global warming debate is you can twist the data to look how ever you want. But the truth of it is that if you look over the cycles of the earth there has always been climate change.
Phil Clarke (14:15:12) :
Wow could you have even a slightly more veiled threat? Look Phil, in the emails I read there was collusion to keep Climate Skeptics to get published. That in and of itself is a kind of fraud. So yes I think you can safely accuse Mann of pushing an agenda in a way to create fraud on the if not political community then the scientific community because if only Warming Agenda Driven science is published then what would most of the scientists out there believe?
Oh and please forward this onto real climate I would love for them to actually post something that disagrees with them. But please only post the thing in its entirely.
Oh and please if someone comes up with numbers to back up their position and they arrive at them through a delusional belief in those numbers that they make up or process being correct when it is nothing more then the fevered delusions of a mad man. Is that classified as fraudulent data or just poor science? Now if those numbers were then used by a political organization to justify tax increases in order to fix the problem those numbers show what then?
When do you call something fraud? Please explain that and then I can tell you whether or not Mann fraudulently claimed that CO2 was causing the world to warm. Is it fraud when a group of people say that your numbers do not make sense and you respond by trying to shut them out of a chance to get their reasons heard? Or simply say, they are in the pocket of big oil ( even when they are not? ) Is that not fraud? or at least the same defamation of character that you just spoke of?
Get a clue Phil and please stop trying to threaten people. It only exposes the fact that you are trying to silence those that feel duped.
RE: photon without a Higgs (19:30:51) :
Y’all got me breakin’ … alternating with head bangin’ in the pit … man, my old bones can barely still do this! LOL!
The refrigerator was based on magnetohydrodynamics and according to a contemporary, “Screamed like a banshee.” Something about magnetic constriction of the metal parts – must have been something to experience.
As I recall, they were in Holland, Leiden University, I think, when they invented it.
I believe all journalists, politicians and even Al Gore now know that AGW is a hoax – they are just in denial. What a huge joke this is.
“The first ones now will later be last
And the times they are a’changin”
wws (05:43:07) :
Nick Stokes – very BAD analogy!!!
No, it’s a very good analogy for its purpose, which is to say that if anyone in the world can come and say “Hold it, buddy, justify this to me again!”, then you’ll never get anything done. And the climate auditors behave as if they should have a right to do just that.
Bradley J. Fikes (07:16:46) :
From all I can tell, most of the “snarling” has been done by the Climategate people. You can see it in the emails.
Private emails, Bradley. The snarling at scientists is public and loud. You can hear it on this thread, and most others at WUWT.
Nick Stokes (11:04:59) :
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t scientists be used to criticism of their work? People criticize everything, ask Brad Childress or Mike Tomlin. The “snarling” aimed at the audit firm Arthur Andersen was “public and loud” enough to bankrupt them, yet they were eventually exonerated in court, to no effect on the result of the company folding. Where was your sympathy for the ‘victims’ of misplaced public intention then, Mr. Stokes?
If the data were published with the papers, there would not even be a need for interaction between the scientists unless there were questions or something was done wrong. This is why auditors have to keep their work papers. Because auditors get audited also, and there is a great amount of emphasis placed on the ability to reproduce the work of an audit to see how the results were achieved. There are fines and jail time involved in negligent or fraudulent audits, what is involved in science? You have to respond to email? Provide data that was used in your work? It is not as though every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world were writing Dr. Phil asking for his data, is it?
Scientists need to have their work criticized as much as auditors do. Yes, this was a bad analogy for you to pick to prove your point.
I’m in my own camp here. I think “Global Warming” was just a good reason to scare the masses (and force them) into using less resources (OIL) through fear and taxation. The problem lies in the fact oil has/is near/or right now is peaking. I’m not saying we are running out, but the cheap/easy stuff is and now we are left with oil sands and deep water drilling. Notice how the MSM (and others) never seem to report on oil production (present/current/future), yet talk about AGW all the time. In my book, oil is VITAL to our economy, more so then some warming… The only alternative is to electrify everything ASAP and head down the nuclear road.
What I haven’t seen, other than from Anthony, by and large, is people with the scientific knowledge to do decent evaluation of “globle warming” studies. That is, people with scientific training who have no interest in the outcome of the study, whether the outcome affects the purse of those doing the reviews, furthers some political or policy agenda, or merely the stature of the person(s) in the scientific community. What would be called “disinterested” people.
Anthony has been going at it in the right way, IMHO. He has been busy checking to see whether or not the basic data, temperature readings at temperature measuring stations, are in themselves accurate, or valid. Without the basic data having validity, studies done using such inaccurate and unreliable data are themselves worthless. The margin of error is huge compared to the variances in temperature being measured.
I, personally having a curiosity in all things “scientific”, have been dismayed at what Anthony has found to be. To think that huge government policy decisions are being made from such flimsy “evidence”, affecting the economic well being of the entire populations of western nations, frightens me, to say the least.
I may be only a professional civil engineer, but I did also major in physics in college. I also took 2 semesters of “heavy duty” chemistry, 3 lectures and 2 labs each week of college. There, we spent an entire lab period with first a lecture regarding the use of mercury thermometers, how they function, how to go about “reading” them properly, primarily avoiding parallax, but other factors as well, far to lengthy to post here, and also learning that the temperature that a mercury thermometer indicates is the temperature of the mercury thermometer itself, which may or may not be the temperature of what surrounds the mercury thermometer, depending on circumstances, once again too lengthy to go into here. I do remember enough of that lab to give a lecture in the subject myself.
That people such as Mann think of themselves so highly, so as to not allow people with knowledge and training in involved science and math relevant to the study methods and procedures, to refuse to release all elements involved in his “studies”, speaks worlds to me. Mainly, he can’t be trusted, nor can the “outcome” of any study he produces be trusted.
Having studies reviewed by only members of a “mutual admiration society” is no way to go about finding any scientific “fact”, or really approaching “fact” as best as could be done.
that is “global”, of course, pardon me.
magicjava (14:11:38) :
[quote]welcome to the dark side.[/quote]
Gives “thumbs up” sign while cashing check from Exxon Mobil.
SIGHHHhhhh
And WHO do you think fund Greenpeace, Sierra Club and WWF??? The Rockefeller foundations. “But,in 1966, testimony before the Patman Committee indicated that the nine Rockefeller family foundations also controlled an average of about 3 % in the Standard Oil Trust descendants.” The controllers of Exxon Mobil are the Rockefellers through several different interlocking groups! see: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2802
Since we are sharing stories about conversions, I’ll make my first post here today by telling you this one:
I have a friend at work who is very forgiving of my skepticism on warming and will actually humor me by having an intelligent discussion on the subject. We were discussing the Darwin data the other day when he made the anecdotal reference that “winters are milder now compared to when I was a kid” (we are in the NE USA). So, just for grins… I went to the NOAA web site and requested the temp data for a town near us. It was emailed to me within moments and I put it into Excel, plotted the daily temps into a graph, and then had Excel add a trend line. The trend for 1960 to 2002 (latest data available from NOAA) was a slight DECLINE.
After sending the graph to him, his reply was “Does this mean the data needs to be adjusted?”.
He seems to have been paying attention after all!
I used the daily mean temp provide by NOAA, removed days with blank/9999 temp readings (about 400 days out of 40,000+ days) from the series, narrowed the range for the graph down to 1960-2002 because Excel can’t plot more than 32,000 points, and had Excel plot the trend as a linear line. I did not adjust any numbers beyond removing those dates without a valid reading.
One down, about 300,000,000 to go…
very gud
Nick Stokes wondered:
Criticism based on science, yes. Criticism using different data showing different trends, from other researchers or amateurs careful about their data, yes. Heckling on the basis of assumed political stands, no.
There’s a difference between saying “I got a different result” and saying “YOU’RE A MASS MURDERER LIKE HITLER, CROOKED AND STUPID, AND YOU HATE YOUR OWN GRANDMOTHER, CHILDREN, AND YOU PROBABLY SPIT ON THE AMERICAN FLAG!” It’s not a subtle difference. I’ll bet you’d notice it, too.
Can’t say where Mr. Stokes was, but I was complaining to the U.S. attorney about it. Data management policies in all the accounting firms required shredding of data as Andersen did. Andersen’s crime was in delaying the shredding, so far as I can figure.
Much of the data were published, and much more are public data that anyone can get. The purloined e-mail flap isn’t over the bulk of data, only those where certain e-mail threads can be misconstrued as embarrassing. There is no methodical program to check the numbers on climate warming, with the possible exception of Anthony Watts’ project — and that may have no significant effect on numbers regardless its outcome.
Some tax records are maintained for five years, but up to Enron the policy in all the Big Six accounting firms — endorsed by FASB — was to shred the records six months after the project ended. At Ernst & Young we were required to do that even on non-audit projects in the management consulting arm.
Another auditor should be able to go into the client and get the records to replicate the audit. Another scientist should be able to start from scratch and replicate scientific observations or experiments. I’m really curious about why there aren’t more people out there gathering data to publish contrary papers, if warming isn’t continuing, didn’t happen, won’t happen in the future.
If the project involves federal funding in the U.S., there are laws requiring no fiddling with the data — it could be a felony in some cases. There are not a lot of prosecutions, but it’s still a crime. On the front end, the paperwork in science is much more thorough than in auditing — scientists base their entire careers and reputations on accuracy. There is no money in science to speak of, anyway — it’s not as if a pot of money awaits anyone who documents global warming.
Well, yeah, it is. FOI requests and other heckling from opponents of Hadley date back more than a decade. Few people who claim there is no warming or no human causation work in the institutional environments most scientists work in, where formal requests for data generally are honored. If you read the e-mails through, you’ll get a glimpse of part of the problem: Scientists have spent an inordinate amount of time filling these heckling, harassing requests. Then, when the full data dump hit the “skeptics,” they come back asking what to do with them, and asking other stupid questions that show they don’t know what they’re doing or why.
I’ve been on all sides of the issue. In the U.S., FOIA is a great tool in the hands of an ethical investigator or researcher looking at an agency where there is skullduggery going on. It’s a great pain to underfunded, cramped-for-time scientists where there is no money in the grant or the agency budget to go above and beyond publishing the data. FOIA requests are favorite tools of the right wing in the U.S. to harass researchers and officials with other jobs to do.
In one case we had a well-funded group sue to stop publication of our official report because, they claimed, we had not answered their FOIA request to their satisfaction. They were shocked to find that I had a record of mailing each of them notices of all the meetings and full boatloads of all the data. They denied in court that they had the stuff they asked for, and in deposition it became clear they didn’t know what they were talking about. They wanted the document that said “let’s break the law this way.” When the agency isn’t breaking a law, an FOIA request generally means “we don’t have the guts to ask you for your data, so we’re going to cost you an arm and leg in lawyers’ fees.
I don’t think much of the gutless who file those requests.
Criticize all you want. Let’s see your database of figures, and will you come to the society’s meeting and do a poster session on how you arrived at your numbers? You’ll need to bring the copies of the papers you have published on the issue or that you have in process toward publication — and show your work, as the high school math teachers say.
If you’re unwilling to do the criticism, don’t wuss out by filing a mean-spirited FOI or FOIA request, okay? That reveals you for the witless, artless troll you shouldn’t wish to be.
wws: “You would have everyone sit around zen like saying “I don’t know, no one knows, no one should do anything because action is an assertion of knowing and I do not know, ohhhhmmmm”
I’m not sure that zen Buddhism employs scepticism in its practice, but yes, scepticism does involve the withholding of judgement. Otherwise, it’s advocacy.
The debate over climate change is about the clash of explanations for the current climate. “Climate scepticism” is an umbrella term that subsumes a number of positions. On the science, you have lukewarming, cosmic rays, solar, clouds, natural variation; on the politics, funding motivations, peer pressure, hubris, corruption, fraud etc.
What you very rarely have is garden-variety scepticism: the withholding of judgment in the face of insufficient evidence. That’s fine; everyone has a point of view. But to understand your own position, you need to understand that it is in fact a position.
Bradley J Fikes: “I don’t quite get your point. The behavior is wrong, wrong wrong… The advocates are the ones saying Climategate doesn’t affect the evidence for AGW and move along, nothing to see.”
You can have advocates for both parties. The fact that your opponents are advocating does not mean that you are not advocating.
My point is that you are framing your move as “from global warming believer to skeptic”. But what are you sceptical about? Earlier you say, “…I’m withholding judgment…” about AGW. That’s a good example of scepticism, so pat on the back.
But you go on to say, “…until the fraud is removed from the science…”, which is in no way sceptical. My comment about advocacy relates to this claim.
[REPLY – It seems to me that calling fraud on certain scientists and saying their conclusions are therefore invalid merely invalidates that position. It does not necessarily validate the contrary position. That’s what he is saying. ~ Evan]
Doug in Seattle (15:47:05) :
Hate to say this, but there pleanty of uninformed climate skeptics too – just not nearly as many as on the AGW side.
Yes but at least we are willing to admit we are uninformed and are willing to try and increase our understanding. Thank you Anthony and a “warm” welcome to Bradley Fikes
Ed Darrell (12:44:25) :
Just for the record, that wasn’t me wondering.
Ed Darrell (12:44:25) :
Criticism based on science, yes. Criticism using different data showing different trends, from other researchers or amateurs careful about their data, yes. Heckling on the basis of assumed political stands, no.
There’s a difference between saying “I got a different result” and saying “YOU’RE A MASS MURDERER LIKE HITLER, CROOKED AND STUPID, AND YOU HATE YOUR OWN GRANDMOTHER, CHILDREN, AND YOU PROBABLY SPIT ON THE AMERICAN FLAG!” It’s not a subtle difference. I’ll bet you’d notice it, too.
OK, I hardly know where to begin, but we could start with my name. I was responding to Nick Stokes, so you could address me instead of him. The Nazi comparisons do come out too often in any political issue, but where did the issue of AGW become political? You seem to have assumed a great deal about political stands in this response, so pot, meet kettle.
Much of the data were published, and much more are public data that anyone can get. The purloined e-mail flap isn’t over the bulk of data, only those where certain e-mail threads can be misconstrued as embarrassing. There is no methodical program to check the numbers on climate warming, with the possible exception of Anthony Watts’ project — and that may have no significant effect on numbers regardless its outcome.
It is apparent after this statement that you do not have the appropriate background on the issue involved in the emails. Hockey stick graphs and all that dendrochronology stuff, or that you don’t see the issue with the IPCC using science of questionable veracity to push a political position, see Copenhagen summit for political position.
Some tax records are maintained for five years, but up to Enron the policy in all the Big Six accounting firms — endorsed by FASB — was to shred the records six months after the project ended. At Ernst & Young we were required to do that even on non-audit projects in the management consulting arm.
Another auditor should be able to go into the client and get the records to replicate the audit. Another scientist should be able to start from scratch and replicate scientific observations or experiments. I’m really curious about why there aren’t more people out there gathering data to publish contrary papers, if warming isn’t continuing, didn’t happen, won’t happen in the future.
I was referring to PCAOB’s rules on keeping working papers of the audit itself, in order to be reviewed by PCAOB.
If the project involves federal funding in the U.S., there are laws requiring no fiddling with the data — it could be a felony in some cases. There are not a lot of prosecutions, but it’s still a crime. On the front end, the paperwork in science is much more thorough than in auditing — scientists base their entire careers and reputations on accuracy. There is no money in science to speak of, anyway — it’s not as if a pot of money awaits anyone who documents global warming.
Actually, there is a good deal of money in studying the ‘effects of climate change’. There is a significant amount of pressure on private enterprises and public entities to study what is going to happen based on the GCMs predictions, which is what the IPCC publishes reports intended for. Perhaps this is why some bear the title “Summary for Policymakers”. I challenge you to point to a scientist who studies climate change on his own time, without working for an institution.
I don’t think much of the gutless who file those requests.
I don’t recall asking what you think, but McIntyre’s communications involving the data certainly don’t seem unreasonable. Of course, I still suspect you have no idea what on Earth I am talking about and are hiding behind your own experiences with FOIA, but I admit I could be wrong. Can you tell me why McIntyre is gutless to use FOI in the way he used it? I will share this: I don’t think much of uninformed cheerleaders who can’t even address the correct person in a twenty paragraph tirade.
All AGW skeptics have deplored the politicization of climate science by the alarmists yet, mirabile dictu, many politically liberal skeptics here are now agonizing over the fillip that the revelations of alarmist corruption may give to “The Right”, thereby thoroughly re-politicizing the issue once more!
Can we not anesthetize our ideological obsessions and partisan anxieties at least as regards climate science? John A and Jay Neumark fret that Climategate and all its works make Rush and Fox News look “fair and balanced” thereby subverting their own hitherto “settled” repugnance towards them as spittle-flecked cross-burning nutjobs. Fox News and Rush “look fair and balanced” on climate change because they are so. They share the skepticism of all those who support this blog. Give them credit where it’s due and revise your judgement of them when necessary.
This, after all, is what we’re asking the alarmists to do, jettison their biases, however dearly held, and objectively and without prejudice assess the evidence fairly, letting the chips fall as they will. Heck, that’s what we loudly proclaim ourselves as doing. We got into this godawful mess in the first place in large part because those who were trusted as principled seekers after truth allowed their own personal, political and ideological predilections to subvert and contaminate their objectivity. They have been roundly and rightly condemned for doing so. So should any of us be condemned if we follow their footsteps into the mire.
Leave politics to the politicians. Rest assured they’ll muck things up quite thoroughly without any help from us.
I’m interested in FOI’s regarding their expenditure of grant funding. More of the usual sort of an audit. Also sources of funding, transfers, and percentage of FTE’s for quality assurance, travel, expense accounts… That sort of thing.
That could be interesting.
@Phil Clarke (16:08:26) : “More detail, please. I am sure that you won’t object to me forwarding your allegations on to Professor Mann while we are waiting, and cross-posting this to RealClimate?”
It would be very interesting to hear Prof. Mann being required to provide evidence in court. That seems pretty unlikely, however, since he’s not even prepared to debate the current issues with sceptical scientists like M*M.
“REPLY – It seems to me that calling fraud on certain scientists and saying their conclusions are therefore invalid merely invalidates that position. It does not necessarily validate the contrary position. That’s what he is saying. ~ Evan”
To call fraud is to make a claim, ie to adopt a position.
Furthermore, it is not the case that making a claim is equivalent to invalidating a position; otherwise, we could invalidate any position by merely making a claim.
Brendan H (19:29:13) :
You can internally invalidate a claim that has not been externally validated but held as valid internally.
conversion? I don’t like how that sounds ;]
I thought fraud was pretty simple:
“1. deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
2. a particular instance of such deceit or trickery: mail fraud; election frauds.
3. any deception, trickery, or humbug: That diet book is a fraud and a waste of time.
4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.
(dictionary.com)”
Fraud is not any more a belief system than anyone’s language. One would let a lot of civilities go, letting this one pass.
I hope Bradley and others do not fail to also at least *consider the possibility* that conservatives may be right about a few other things as well as this particular matter.
Bonnie (22:53:13) :
I hope Bradley and others do not fail to also at least *consider the possibility* that conservatives may be right about a few other things as well as this particular matter.
Well, Bonnie, I do not know about Bradley, but I have always tried to consider every point of view when I think about something. I have been liberal my entire life. I also bought the AGW line until recently. Last winter, in fact. When it was below zero for almost a week straight in Ohio, my belief hit bottom. Easy to believe when it is 90F outside, but not when it is -20F with windchill!! Then I began reading and thinking and I feel that there is a gross error in the way that the problem of Earth’s temperature has been approached. I don’t feel that the temperature of the surface over the last 30 years is conclusive of anything, and especially not after I read what Anthony documented with the surface stations project. Since then, I have remained firmly unconvinced by anything the scientists have sputtered out. It is incredible to me how much of what they say goes flat out unchallenged. See the Texas Climatologist for an example.
As far as giving everything else conservatives say a chance, I don’t know about that. Conservatives seem to have the common sense clinical approach to humanity while the liberals have the Earthly concern for humanity. As paradoxical as this seems, I feel it is true. Which is why I think the way I do and feel the way I do. I give everyone a chance to prove themselves, regardless of affiliation. If we began to talk economics, taxes, or societal concern, you would see the difference (and similarity) between me and a conservative, but in AGW, again, I remain firmly unconvinced.
In short, I am one of the truly unaffiliated people in the American political process. If I could have, I would have pulled the ticket for McCain-Biden.
If we were playing poker this is where I’d say “I’ll see your 2035 date and bid 2030”
NASA carries things a bit further and says “Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030.”
The reference is IPCC AR4, so I have no idea why NASA changed the bogus 2035 date to an even more bogus 2030.
ref: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ , go down to the 6th photo.
Our tax dollars at work
Charlie (23:27:15) :
Which only begs the question:
How much of the peer reviewed literature is valid?
Think about it! IPCC cited this, NASA cites IPCC, EPA cites NASA, CO2 is found dangerous.
So forget about the melting ice – of course Global Warming has absolutely nothing to do with temperature. Gnomes have lowered the freezing point of water and have changed agricultural plants in such a way that they grow and yield earlier. Just like that!
‘Conversion’ is no science, guys.
Charlie (23:27:15) :
NASA carries things a bit further and says “Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030.”
The reference is IPCC AR4, so I have no idea why NASA changed the bogus 2035 date to an even more bogus 2030.
***
There are several “glaciers gone by 2030” claims that are not the Himalayas. Glacier National Park in Montana and Kilimanjaro in Africa are two easily found examples. So while the sentence is technically accurate if the writer is talking about “certain regions” and not specifically the Himilayas, throwing in the Himilayas at the end, just before the 2030 date, is misleading and confusing. As a child of the NASA heyday, I expect better from them.
Wow, Bradley – you’ve been “converted” – too bad nobody told the Kenyans in Africa (http://mcc.org/stories/news/climate-change-affecting-small-scale-farmers-kenya) or the Inuits in the Canadian Arctic (http://inuitcircumpolar.com/files/uploads/icc-files/PR-2009-11-13-call-to-action.pdf) that climate change isn’t real!
Christine (04:15:25),
Stick around here for a while. I have a feeling you’re going to get an education – not only on the science, but on how to recognize rent-seeking propaganda.
The climate always changes, and the Inuit simply have their hand out.
Christine (04:15:25) :
Wow, Bradley – you’ve been “converted” – too bad nobody told the Kenyans in Africa (http://mcc.org/stories/news/climate-change-affecting-small-scale-farmers-kenya) or the Inuits in the Canadian Arctic (http://inuitcircumpolar.com/files/uploads/icc-files/PR-2009-11-13-call-to-action.pdf) that climate change isn’t real!
Wow, Christine! You offered a straw man argument – too bad nobody told you those are logical fallacies, and therefor useless. No one says climate change isn’t real. It has always changed, and always will. Currently, we seem to be in a cooling phase, and the evidence points to significant cooling in the coming decades. That will not be good, as warmer is always better for humans, and for all life.
The argument is about what effect man’s roughly 3% contribution to C02, a beneficial gas which plants require, and thrive when there is more of it has on climate. If you will try reading just a bit beyond the usual Alarmist claptrap articles such as the ones you linked to, you too will find yourself believing the AGW nonsense less and less, until you realize it’s all been a huge fraud. The lie that has held sway for so long is now, finally, giving way to the truth.
Christine:
As for the Kenyans, “it’s an ill wind …” I.e., the residents around the Sahara (and one other desert), which is shrinking, are benefiting from climate change.
In my limited experience I have found in most things that ommissions speak louder than rhetoric. It is all about knowing the right questions to ask.
REPLY: [ I call this “Seeing the negative space”. What is not said speaks volumes. And you are, IMHO, quite right. -ems ]
The same thing applies when listening to people in all forms of presentation where they are trying to dance around things they don’t reveal. Does not matter if it is a military spokesmen talking about a classified subject or a lawyer answering a question in a news conference. What they don’t say, or phrases that seem overly restrictive are flashing lights warning you to look deeper.
“I have not seen that report yet!”
translation, “My staff is reading that report.”
“Is that fighter plane capable of Mach 3?” — “its mission is low level bombing!”
Translation — “Yes it is designed for low level high speed bombing runs.”
“Do you support this cover up?” — “I am appalled by these revelations!”
Translation — I am appalled we got caught, I told them to hide this activity!”
Larry
Bruce Cobb
So, Mr. Clarke, is this you?
Nope.
So when will Mr Fikes be converting his website accusation of fraud (about the most serious accusation one can make against a scientist) into a formal complaint to the University authorities?
Outside of Alice in Wonderland, this is, after all the usual course of events, when making a serious, potentially career-ending allegation, the onus is on the accuser to make his case and present the evidence.
So come on, Mr Fikes, step up and submit your evidence to the authorities, the stakes are extraordinarily high, the claim that a Professor commited scientific fraud is extraordinary. As Carl Sagan noted, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Where is yours?
Either you’re hoaxing, or you’ve been hoaxed. No one gets rich off of studying global warming. It’s hard work. It requires serious thought. The competition for grants is stupendous. There’s no serious commercial application. Dozens of well-funded big businesses prefer the findings not be found.
All of the original climate change work was done by scientists on their own time without any extra compensation — especially the CO2 work. I challenge you to find one who is making money off of the stuff.
It’s almost humorous to see people make such bizarre claims. If we “follow the money” in this discussion, we find there isn’t much for people doing serious research, on either side. There’s some money for the support of Astroturf organizations, but again, that doesn’t go to research.
Insurance actuaries make a fair amount of money, but they base their work on known science. You may want to take a look at how actuaries come down on the issues, and what they do with the data. They aren’t getting extra money for projecting warming, however — they make money when they are accurate and can help insurance companies reduce payoffs by avoiding unnecessary risks. In the free market of ideas, warming is the accepted idea. In the free market, warming is recognized as a serious problem by people whose jobs are to look out for serious problems. Skeptics don’t score in either free market.
And that’s too bad. We’re not talking good news here, after all.
I complained about pointless, heckling and harassing FOI requests: “I don’t think much of the gutless who file those requests.”
REPLY: As usual Ed, you are flat wrong. The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/climate-science-follow-the-money/
Ah, I see I made a format error, too. Someone will, no doubt, take offense, and see a conspiracy.
REPLY: You know Ed, reasonable people just ask for it to be corrected instead of projecting. When your school students make an error, do you project conspiracy theory on them? Now what is the formatting error you’d like fixed pardner? – A
Ed Darrell (09:57:52) :
Let me see if I have got this right. There is no need for FOI because, by invoking it, one proves one is not a serious researcher deserving of the information. You know, someone ought to novelize that concept.
My apologies for the error — I was not interested in an argument ad hominem, but instead I was arguing on the issues.
Certainly did not seem that way. You are dead wrong on the issues. If you are against the freedom of information act, then I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. You are wrong, but there is no convincing you, so I wash my hands of the conversation. I can tell from the statement below that reality’s message on the answering machine still awaits.
Dozens of well-funded big businesses prefer the findings not be found.
I misidentified the author of a post to which I responded, and said: “My apologies for the error — I was not interested in an argument ad hominem, but instead I was arguing on the issues.”
Dave F said:
Answer the issues and show me, then. I’m just writing what I know. If you have contrary data, please post it. Our disagreement certainly shouldn’t be interpreted as my saying anything about whoever made the argument, especially since I responded only to the argument.
As I noted earlier, I’ve worked for FOIA acts in three different states, and was a member of the national FOIA committee for some years. If you want to pick a fight, how about picking a fight on something substantial, where we disagree? I’m not opposed to FOIA — I think it’s a good tool under certain circumstances. Generally it works best when used by journalists in pursuit of journalistic stories. It’s not a great tool for science research, and it’s a poor tool for rebuttal of published science research.
There’s no convincing me by simply claiming I’m in error with no data, no. If you have a case, make it.
I noted:
Do you disagree? Make a case. That’s been very much the history of all efforts to clean up the air since the 1940s. There are notable exceptions, but it’s fair and accurate to note that industry generally claims an inability to clean the air so much as health or other concerns require. I’m making a mere statement of history. I find it odd that you think history means I’m obstinate.
Ed Darrell (09:57:52) :
“I challenge you to find one who is making money off of the stuff. “
Fish, barrel.
Really, Ed, do you have anything to say other than “I believe the pro-AGW side”? Because, you could save a lot of pixels, and incrementally lower your carbon footprint in the process, by leaving it at that.
Bart, I asked for a pointer to someone making money off of global warming. You linked back to an Anthony Watts post. Are you saying Watts is making money off of warming? I doubt that.
The post mentioned Al Gore — of course, you aren’t crass enough to suggest that Gore makes money off of it, are you? Because you’ve got a heck of a mountain to climb to make that case.
The challenge stands: Name someone who makes money off of warming. I don’t mean hurl mud, I mean name someone who makes money, and tell us how they do it.
Technically, since ‘global warming’ is an almost completely natural occurrence, it’s the wrong way to ask the question. But we know what was meant. So, off the top of my head…
James Hansen: Minimum of $720,000
Rajendrea Pachauri: click. Probably much more than Gore
Al Gore: $100,000,000+
Phil Jones: £13,700,000 [$22 million]
Federal gov’t AGW grants: $50+ billion past decade [vs Skeptic funding of $19 million]
Everyone who has written an alarmist book
Every university that accepts AGW grants
Every advertising agency hired by the gov’t to warn of “carbon”
The thoroughly corrupt UN
Shell Oil company among many others
China, Russia, India, Brazil, and every country that was given carbon credits to sell, as part of the original Kyoto scam…
This is too easy. I could go on all day, because the question is as simple to answer as the old Groucho Marx game show question: “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”
The taxpayers are being forced to pay the for the AGW fraud. The wealth transfer from the general population to the special interest groups that benefit is projected to be in excess of $1,000,000,000,000.
That is real money. And every pocket that money goes into, whether it’s Al Gore’s, or foreign countries, or James Hansen’s, or the opaque and unaccountable UN, or oil companies, or the CRU climate scientists who strategized by email about how to hide payola from the taxman, and every other AGW special interest, will be making money from ‘global warming’ — just as the rest of us will be forced to pay much higher taxes, much higher gas prices, and pretty much more for everything else.
The common citizens are the ones being robbed by the CO2=CAGW tricksters, based on the repeatedly falsified conjecture that mostly natural change in a tiny trace gas will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.
I wasn’t looking for a comedy routine, Smokey. I wasn’t looking for bald face falsehoods.
How, do you claim, did Al Gore make $100 million off of global warming?
Your claim is beyond silly.
It’s scurrilous, too.
What in the world makes you think such things? Is there any logical explanation for your statement, or are your claims [snip – clean up your language ]
Ed, get a clue. If you need help, just do a search of “Gore”.
Anyone who actually believes that Al Gore isn’t in the globaloney/carbon credits scam for money doesn’t understand the first thing about what’s going on in the real world.
Maybe Al is selling those $1,200 pix with him out of pure altruism — and Pachauri is in the game for the frequent flyer miles, huh?
I’m not in it for the money either, Ed. So you can have your pic taken with me for only $500. We can even do it in front of a global warming sign if you like. Just like Al.
Yep, me and Al. Neither of us is in it for the money.
More climate scam loot: click
Just explain your case. You claimed Al Gore has already made $100 million on global warming.
We’re from Missouri — except for those of us from the SEC who want to see how you work your numbers so Al can go to jail. Explain how Al Gore made $100 million when he gave away his proceeds from climate change work.
I’m just calling your bluff, that’s all. Show us how it works.
Ed Darrell,
Say it ain’t so, Ed, that you’ve been living in your mom’s basement all this time, so you never heard of Al Gore’s amazing financial rocketship to enormous wealth.
Global warming – specifically, the looming AGW climate catastrophe – is Gore’s schtick. He’s gotten rich off of it. Take away Gore’s ‘climate change’ alarmism [Earth In The Balance, An Inconvenient Truth; $200K speaking fees, brokering the sale of “carbon credits”, $1,200 ten-second photo op lines of sycophants, etc.], and about 98% of his income would never have been possible.
Al Gore has leveraged his global warming scaremongering into centimillionaire status. And he personally leveraged his gloom ‘n’ doom global warming alarmism into Board seats on influential companies, and into his own company selling “carbon credits”, and into being a “senior advisor” to Google, and into speaking tours with Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales [who has just censored references to Climategate], etc.
You wrote: “How, do you claim, did Al Gore make $100 million off of global warming Your claim is beyond silly.”
Now it’s my turn to call your bluff: document the fact [no opinion, please] that Al Gore actually “gave away” his $100 million in global warming proceeds. Show us how that works. Because I’m skeptical of Al Gore’s self-aggrandizing altruistic motives. If he really believed what he’s selling to the public, Al would be a traitor to the human race for his profligate over-consumption and waste of resources – the same waste of resources that he criticizes others for.
Smokey, you shouldn’t act the complete idiot on economic and finance stuff, as you do. By the way, my mother’s dead, and you’re a troll just for bringing it up.
Gore’s estimated $100 million fortune boost came through stocks — he sits on the board of Apple and he’s a paid advisor to Google. It would be darn near impossible to have access to the stock options and pay from those two stock rockets and not get filthy rich. You could read about it in Ken Auletta’s new book, Googled: The end of the world as we know it. (Here’s a rumor for you to worry about, though it’s almost certainly untrue: “Gore makes a penny for every Google search — every time you Google “global warming,” he makes a penny. Worse for you, he’s got a deal with Microsoft to make $0.03 for every Bing search. If that’s true, Al Gore will make millions just dishing accurate information about climate change, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t even think about his deal for iTunes downloads!”) Gore makes money on information and technology advances, an area where he was an early advocate and an early adopter, and an area in which he remains probably the highest ranking once-elected official who knows how to make the technology work (rumor has it that his microwave oven and even his old VCR display the accurate time, adjusted for daylight savings).
Gore’s contributions of proceeds from his Nobel Prize, the film, and his lectures, are well known, well tracked by major media (who bother to check out the IRS filings) . One would need to be near a troglodyte to be unaware of the facts.
Oh, you could look it up in the finance pages of major newspapers, but that would be too much like research, wouldn’t it?
That would be 100,000 photos. With 100,000 people who forked over $1,000 to pay for the thing, you’d think that you’d be able to offer 1% or 2% of the people to testify to the accuracy of your statement. And yet you don’t even have one person. If you did the math, you’d see that your claims are ridiculous before you make them.
There’s a reason those two guys at Google, who started in their dorm room, are worth billions, and you are not. They listen to smart people, and they learn.
You just never learn, Smokey. (I’ve given you the link that proves your error, to save you from having to Google it yourself.) You could do much better if you’d just listen to Al Gore sometime.
Ed Darrell (15:39:56) :
“Bart, I asked for a pointer to someone making money off of global warming. You linked back to an Anthony Watts post.”
Ed… You’re an idiot.