Von Storch op-ed in the WSJ: 'Climategate reveals a concerted effort to emphasize scientific results useful to a political agenda'

Politics and science never mix…that is a well known fact.
In the UK we have a generation of politicians who have never lived in the real world as many of them have gone from universtiy to being researchers and then into politics.
They are easily persuaded, especially if they feel it will make them a saviour of the people…or in this case the planet.
When Mrs Thatcher was in power British Rail were doing very well with their Inter-City service but wanted to improve journey times by having trains that could go around bends faster, so they came up with the first “tilting” train.
It was a a very difficult development but one that would eventually resolve itself.
However in steps the Transport Minister of the day to put a timescale on the project.
It was introduced before all the problems had been fully resolved and tested.
Big day arrives and the press are to travel from Scotland down to London.
Disaster…breakdowns and the far from perfect “titling” mechanism made passengers feel ill.
Huge emarrassment and the end of the project.
A once proud nation who had the first great railway system virtually stops makiig trains.
Politics in science..albeit this was engineering is a nightmare as we have had for the last 10 years or so with the climate.
On a brighter note I was travelling a UK motorway today (the M6 between Coventry and Birmingham) and painted in white on one of the bridges were the words “Climategate”……its a start!!

“P Gosselin (09:52:54) :
Healthy minds normally would welcome evidence that we’re not headed toward a climate catastrophe. But not our sick politicians of today. Rather than being relieved, and directing resources to other problems, they are doing all they can to keep this “climate problem” alive. They are using climate as a way of shirking their responsibilities to solve the real problems out there.”
First…my believe that healthy minds and politicians ought not be mentioned in the same paragraph.
on to the point…
Politicians HAVE to keep this alive, as it’s a major source of much needed funding. I doubt very much that more than a few even understand the issues, and fewer than that care. What they care about is being able to extort some type of tax, in any form it can be sold, to give them money to spend on whatever pet project they have that they believe will ultimately help win re-election.
JimB from USA

The sheeple at Huffington Post are figuring it out all on their own, even though Huffington post shovels the man-made global warming hoax 24/7. Check out the comment section.
Winter Storm Threatens Long Delays For Holiday Travelers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/23/winter-storm-threatens-lo_n_401592.html

A very well thought through post and lucid article.
Which enables me now to thank you Mr Watts, Charles, others who assist you and all posters a Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year.
Reply: Our “Professor and…Mary Ann” should listed appropriately. DB Stealey, Evan, and our most recent part time addition E. M. Smith. ~ Gilligan aka charles the moderator.

This guy is playing both sides. He really spoilsa good opening by a dogmatic statement that the knowledge on AGW is certain. In other words he too does not understand what science is all about. Following on Christopher Monkton, I recommend T.H. Huxley to him, ‘Scepticism is the highest of duties’.

If Global C02 concentration averages 390ppm, and man’s contribution to earth’s natural production of C02 is roughly 3-5%, how can anyone claim only man’s contribution elevates global concentration by the roughly 1ppm/yr observed rise? I’ve seen arguments about isotope fractions attempting to prove this. But why am I to believe that any single isotope will be the sole contributor to the rise? Why am I to believe that earth’s uptake is capable of adjusting in virtual lockstep with earths production of C02, such that only the presence of man’s contribution upsets the magical balance? This notion of magical balance (and man’s destruction of it) is a primary tenet of Pantheists/Eco-zealots. Nor does this thinking recognize the logarithmic growth of flora. That growth is quite accelerated with increasing C02, leading to an ever greater uptake of C02.
So I’m not even buying the notion that man’s production of C02 is the cause of rising global concentrations, let alone that said rise results in increased GMT, or then that rise in GMT is something to be feared.

“Elevated greenhouse gas concentrations have led, and will continue to lead, to changing weather conditions (climate), in particular to warmer temperatures and changing precipitation. . . ”
It seems that in order for the doctor to reach such a conclusion, he must have also concluded that the net effect of all feedback mechanisms is positive or if negative not negative enough to offset the GHG warming component. If he has concluded as much, could he point us to the research that demonstrates this conclusively and empirically. . . . . empirically, not GCMs.

It would appear that ‘the end justifies the means’ when it comes to AGW. In addition it is a common human trait to look for singular answers to the world around us, when in reality that world is full of what appears to be contradictions and ambiguity.

Yes JDN, I also find the ads on this page annoying. And as a canadian resident, I’m also getting the self-serving “Quebec At Copenhagen” ad/link whose only purpose is to make our politicians look green in the eyes of the brain-washed voters. Feast you eyes;
http://quebecatcopenhagen.gouv.qc.ca/en/

“I would give you the piece of advice, not to provide us with too many moving targets” – good thing Anders F. R. was appointed head of NATO in August. [/sarcasm off]
Btw. Anders Fogh Rasmussen attended several Bilderberg meetings – also as acting Danish PM. Connie Hedegaard , president of COP15 , has also attended Bilderberg meetings.
Actually, in Denmark , there is a clear trend that Bilderberg members are defending and acting , both in public and professionally , very pro AGW.
I would really like to see some meeting minutes.

I respect Van Storch as a scientist and an honest man, but I suspect that (even) he has not thought through the full impacts of Climategate, especially when he indicates that the science underpinning CO2-induced warming remains solid.
The vast majority of people seem not yet to have fully grasped the damage done to the science underlying the argument for CO2-induced global warming. Dr David Deming (University of Oklahoma) reported in his 2006 testimony to the US Senate that he had received e-mails as early as 1996 which emphasised the need to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. In the released CRU e-mails we can now see the skeletal frame and some of the muscle of a conspiracy amongst a partisan group of scientists to maintain and endorse this fiction in pre-instrumental temperature reconstruction.
Most observers seem to believe that this was done solely so that a claim could be made that 20th century temperatures were unprecedented – and such claim was indeed made, and has been endlessly repeated, following the production of the now infamous “hockey-stick” temperature plot by Mann, Bradley and Hughes in 1999. The hockey-stick became and has remained (despite a comprehensive debunking by McIntyre and McKittrick and the Wegman Commission) the icon of global warming alarmists. The released e-mails and associated documentation now confirm that this non-scientific fiction was maintained by a group of interconnected scientists all “independently” publishing similar findings with pre-conceived outcomes, and all in a powerful position to suppress contrarian views.
So why did they do this? What was so important about getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)? The answer, in my view, is that the scientific basis for CO2 being a DANGEROUS greenhouse gas comes exclusively from model-derived ‘cause and attribution’ studies. The coupled GCMs which form inputs to the IPCC’s GMIP project ALL assume that Earth’s climate response to solar activity is due solely to direct changes in total solar irradiance. No other amplification factors are considered, despite dozens of excellent papers showing evidence for the existence of other factors. This minimal response ascribed to Sol, together with negative feedbacks ascribed to (unmeasured) aerosols used as a matching parameter, then permits a high climate response to be awarded to CO2-plus-feedbacks to explain the 20th century temperature record, and it is this which forms the gravamen of the argument that CO2 causes DANGEROUS climate change; i.e. “we can find nothing else which would explain late 20th century warming”.
If one brings back the inconvenient MWP, then the alarmists face an immediate scientific paradox. Using the climate sensitivity which the models ascribe to Sol, it is simply not possible to explain the 1.5 to 2 degrees fall in temperature which took place between the MWP and the period of low solar activity (Dalton and Maunder Minima) corresponding to the Little Ice Age in the late 17th century. In other words, if the MWP existed, then the argument for dangerous global warming from CO2 has a self-evident paradox. One can only eliminate the paradox by increasing the climate sensitivity to Sol and decreasing the impact of CO2 in any history-matching (hindcasting) of model results. In my view, this is the main reason why there has been a concerted effort by alarmists since 1996 to make the MWP disappear from the text books. Whatever this is, it is not good science, and this is why the Climategate e-mails will not go away anytime soon. It is also the reason why I suspect that Von Storch will have to rethink his statements.

Van Storch is a financial ‘prisoner’ of the institutional dictatorships that pay him his salary. Consequently he tries to play two tunes, one critical and one supportive, thereby presenting himself as a ‘neutral’ in the war between institutional dictatorship (scientific and political) and democracy (we, the people).
Winston Churchill’s famous diatribe against ‘neutrality’ in the Second World War comes to mind: ”There is nothing so despicable as a neutral in the war between good and evil,” thundered the great man. I’m with Churchill. Van Storch isn’t.

OT… I’m excited because it was confirmed that the solar system is crossing an interstellar cosmic cloud. First read my articles at:
http://www.biocab.org/Cosmic-Rays-Graph.html
Then after, the confirmation of the presence of the ICC at:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm?list1335306