Climategate: You should be steamed
By NEIL FRANK, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Jan. 2, 2010
Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”
If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.
Climate alarmists would like you to believe the science has been settled and all respectable atmospheric scientists support their position. The believers also would like you to believe the skeptics are involved only because of the support of Big Oil and that they are few in number with minimal qualifications.
But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.
Last year 60 German scientists sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to “strongly reconsider” her position supporting man-made global warming. Sixty scientists in Canada took similar action. Recently, when the American Physical Society published its support for man-made global warming, 200 of its members objected and demanded that the membership be polled to determine the APS’ true position.
What do the skeptics believe? First, they concur with the believers that the Earth has been warming since the end of a Little Ice Age around 1850. The cause of this warming is the question. Believers think the warming is man-made, while the skeptics believe the warming is natural and contributions from man are minimal and certainly not potentially catastrophic à la Al Gore.
Second, skeptics argue that CO2 is not a pollutant but vital for plant life. Numerous field experiments have confirmed that higher levels of CO2 are positive for agricultural productivity. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is a very minor greenhouse gas. More than 90 percent of the warming from greenhouse gases is caused by water vapor. If you are going to change the temperature of the globe, it must involve water vapor.
Third, and most important, skeptics believe that climate models are grossly overpredicting future warming from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world.
The revelation of Climategate occurs at a time when the accuracy of the climate models is being seriously questioned. Over the last decade Earth’s temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?
Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.
Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology, was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974–87) and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in 2008.
[h/t: Invariant]
Climategate: You should be steamed
By NEIL FRANK
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Jan. 2, 2010, 4:28PM
/*
Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”
If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.
Climate alarmists would like you to believe the science has been settled and all respectable atmospheric scientists support their position. The believers also would like you to believe the skeptics are involved only because of the support of Big Oil and that they are few in number with minimal qualifications.
But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.
Last year 60 German scientists sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to “strongly reconsider” her position supporting man-made global warming. Sixty scientists in Canada took similar action. Recently, when the American Physical Society published its support for man-made global warming, 200 of its members objected and demanded that the membership be polled to determine the APS’ true position.
What do the skeptics believe? First, they concur with the believers that the Earth has been warming since the end of a Little Ice Age around 1850. The cause of this warming is the question. Believers think the warming is man-made, while the skeptics believe the warming is natural and contributions from man are minimal and certainly not potentially catastrophic à la Al Gore.
Second, skeptics argue that CO2 is not a pollutant but vital for plant life. Numerous field experiments have confirmed that higher levels of CO2 are positive for agricultural productivity. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is a very minor greenhouse gas. More than 90 percent of the warming from greenhouse gases is caused by water vapor. If you are going to change the temperature of the globe, it must involve water vapor.
Third, and most important, skeptics believe that climate models are grossly overpredicting future warming from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world.
The revelation of ClimateÂgate occurs at a time when the accuracy of the climate models is being seriously questioned. Over the last decade Earth’s temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?
Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.
Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology, was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974–87) and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in 2008.
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Re Hacker v Whistleblower
Which one “forwarded to” or “copied in” Paul Hudson of the BBC some 6 weeks prior to the data dump?
Throwing them out of office is essential. Another journalist went so far as to say that American voters are the last, best hope for this task, as the rest of the free world is no longer “free.”
Today, Nature Magazine, called a “great” science magazine, has a front-page write-up on their hero, Steven Chu, the US energy secretary who is going to direct the spending of billions of dollars on global warming. He uses the hockey stick as his evidence. (He just received billions more of stimulus money.)
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091223/full/462978a.html
Look at his power. Look at the money.
“David Segesta (12:57:30) :
AGW is like one of the zombies from the Night of the Living Dead. Every time you think it’s dead it comes crawling out of the grave and tries to bite you. :-(”
It might even be an older evil.
“Defenses
The three classic defenses against Satan are:
mockery, which Satan cannot withstand due to his pride
sunlight or exposure, from which Satan hides
the Holy Spirit, meaning “The Advocate” (i.e., defense lawyer), or the Armor of God[1].
Note that Satan lacks self-restraint, which often leads him to failure. In addition, Satan delights in deceit, even to the point of causing his downfall. ”
Anybody see some similarities?
P.S., Yall may have heard that Houston had a record-early, snowman-capable event on Dec 4th. I’ve got a really dead banana tree to prove it. This was a bit less than a year after tying the previous record on Dec 12th, 2008. Two snow years in a row is also unprecedented, as far as I know.
But, as we all know…weather is not climate!
Rob M. (10:27:24) :
Just thought I’d point that out to save the warmists a job.
Not too many of them around since November 19.
photon without a Higgs (12:54:28) :
Fair to say that it was “rumored” to be hackers by those with mud on thier faces. The hacker theory is a diversion.
There are other far more plausible explanations.
Like someone on the inside bent on delivering a ‘payback’.
So, now you have discovered that there is no good scientific basis to flaw the CRU you move the focus to the dialogue with climate skeptics. Have you read, as I have, the force and venom of much of the rhetoric on this blog? Seems to me the folk at CRU were positively saintly! 🙂 This contribution moves us nowhere. Just more zombie arguments that are really getting boring, and lets get this straight, talk about all these protesters with PhDs is pure obfuscation. it means nothing unless we know what their PhD was in and what their research and/or teaching record is. Of course every one has a right to their opinion, but definitely not to their own facts, and sure, this guy has an opinion, and even his facts are largely correct, they are just not relevant to the subject and his personal opinions are specious.
PJP 12:56 wrote.
Thanks for the reply. In the experiment which was supposed to be botched the skeptic of the experiment stated:
“A greater amount of carbon dioxide will be warmer when heat is applied. This is not a surprise!”
Well then – admission? to what I’m trying to get at. We accept that CO2 works just fine to stay in our current climate sweet spot and the very admission that when you add CO2 it heats is exactly my point and is a law of physics that was discovered back to 1816 I believe.
We are not as the feedback level yet which is debatable, but I hear read that CO2 heating the planet does not work and I beg to differ in that if it did not we would be living on an inhabitable planet – NO?
So with the premise it works OK for sustainable life – why not the argument that too much of it (CO2) drives warming and a lot of it makes it unsustainable perhaps?
I’m just looking for the logic train here and thanks very much for your respectable indulgence.
Wanna bet? Click here:
https://www.intrade.com/index.jsp?request_operation=trade&request_type=action&selConID=706211
The current Intrade odds are only 1 in 4, so if the Met thinks they ought to be better than 1 in 2, they should “put their money down.” (They’ve got lots of it.)
John M (12:35:45) :
Somebody please tell me their thoughts?
Well, first the obvious: The Earth is not a coke bottle.
But second, although there are some here who question the basic link between CO2 and atmospheric warming, I think the vast majority of folks here accept the “basic physics and chemistry”, but not the convoluted arguments based on global circulation models and the magical “everything is caused by global warming” claims.
Sure, “all things being equal”, the earth is likely to be warmer with a higher level of CO2, but that’s the trick isn’t it? “All things being equal”.
And that leaves us with:
1) how much?
2) by when?
3) so what?
Item 3 is not just meant as a smart a$$ remark. It is asked in all seriousness. So the Earth warms by x amount by year y. What does it really mean to the Earth?
You can’t answer that with a coke bottle experiment.
John all well taken. I’m agnostic on EVERYTHING. It is not my religion as it might be to some, but that plays both ways, but i want to stay with the science because I can learn from you as you can learn from me – I think it’s improvement in dialogue and that’s healthy.
I think the 1.2.3’s are really important
all I was after is to see basics apply so we can agree and dispute with some reasonable agreement.
Thank you John M.
Nick Mabbs (10:44:38) :
at your link:
Whistleblower Rewards Program….If you know of anyone who might have details about fraudulent statements or actions by recipients of federal grant funds for climate research….30% of $50 million is more than $12 million. Ask your friends to do the right thing, and be rewarded for doing it.
Michael Mann is soon going to find out who his friends are !
Karma police arrest this man.
Mike (11:00:17) :
The big problem is coal.
You’re right. There isn’t any where near enough of it being used!
This is a big problem.
Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
So even a lie regarding the climate change is IN YOUR BEST INTEREST!
———–
Thank you for that [snip (*sigh*)]
Mike (11:08:42) :
those who accept the preponderance of scientific evidence for AGW are derided as “believers”.
I see you played the ‘Big Tobacco’ card in your comment.
Would you list the scientific evidence for the disaster scenarios of ‘manmade global warming’. You used the word ‘preponderance’. So you must have a long list of data to back this word.
BTW, computer climate models are not data. Science needs data to be real science. So will you list the data that shows disasters are coming to the earth from manmade co2?
Also, I see manmade global warming disaster believers are using the word preponderance lately. Is this planned?
“Roger (13:21:00) :
[…]
Pinatubo cooling was basically ejection material ash and other chemicals which caused much more reflected sunlight in the stratosphere i,e See “Year without a summer”, 3 volcanoes mainly Mt. Tambora ejection material with more outgoing long wave radiation OLR which then cooled the earth? I do not think CO2 had much if anything to do with that cooling.
I’ll wait for your response thank you very much! I think this is where might start to differ on causes. I want to explore more of this.
Thanks Dirk”
For me, my perspective on the CO2-caused warming started to clear up when i realized – through reading WUWT and my own thinking – that the IR absorption must already be almost saturated with tiny amounts of CO2. That means any IR emitted by the surface is absorbed after 10 meters or so.
From there i started to explore and found Ferenc Miskolczi’s work. There’s debate about the validity of his thinking and it’s too complicated for me… I can only gather an impression. There MUST after all be a reason for the computer models going completely off the rails – they are as it is complete bonkers! (And you can find an assessment of that – with much much kinder words – at realclimate if you dare to go there. They show real temperatures right below the huge span of their own predictions… and say something like : Hey that’s not so bad, it’s only slightly lower than our lowest prediction! We’re good!)
I don’t know where i read this with Mt. Pinatubo but a quick googling for
“pinatubo humidity CO2”
reveals this
http://www.springerlink.com/content/37eb1l5mfl20mb7k/
“Quantifying the water vapour feedback associated with post-Pinatubo global cooling ”
P. M. de F. Forster and M. Collins
“However, in both the upper troposphere and Southern Hemisphere the observed model water vapour response differs markedly from the observations. The observed range represents a 40%–400% increase in the magnitude of surface temperature change when compared to a fixed water vapour response and is in good agreement with values found in other studies.”
Ah darn i had it the wrong way round! Pinatubo caused a cooling through ashes. You’re right there.They observed some change in the water vapour they didn’t quite expect from the traditional models:
“Variability, both in the observed value and in the climate models feedback parameter, between different ensemble members, suggests that the long-term water vapour feedback associated with global climate change could still be a factor of 2 or 3 different than the mean observed value found here and the model water vapour feedback could be quite different from this value; although a small water vapour feedback appears unlikely.”
Ah well they couldn’t have known about Dr. M’s theory, it wasn’t published in 2004…
See where this leads? It’s very interesting…. Ashes lead to cooling and humidity. And vice versa. At least that’s what i’m thinking.
“Roger (13:39:43) :
[…]
We are not as the feedback level yet which is debatable,”
Roger, of course there is feedback! But beware! Water vapour gives birth to more watervapour! Of course! But the gain is extremely weak as in a near-saturated absorption it is a very flat part of a logarithmic function – whether we talk about CO2 or water vapour.
See the grafic by Anthony Watts in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/15/9373/
So the “echo” of the feedback gets ever so faint… The alarmists proudly show their feedbacks and their tipping points but what they don’t say is that the feedback must be so weak as to be statistically insignificant.
Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
…the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!
This is a shallow attempt.
There is more oil in Alaska than in the Middle East. And we all know that oil is untapped.
There is more resources in Russia than in the Middle East. Putin has become the richest man in the world from it.
There is enough oil for decades in the US.
There is no emergency need to develop alternatives. Saying there is in just one more sky is falling hysteria.
Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
…the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!
There’s no need to use caps and yell at us. Many people who comment on this blog know the facts about natural resources. Yelling at them won’t change their minds.
Neal wrote
Coal is a source of C02 we could replace with Nuclear. One thing I do not understand about the warmer politicians is why they are not pushing nuclear. It’s clean, cheap energy, but it seems as the South Africans and Japanese are pushing for small nuclear power plants for the emerging world, Luddites in the US are pushing to go back to the cart and buggy days or to try to make “green” energy, whatever that is, work.
I used to be that way about a year ago but have come to the conclusion if we are to make logacl headway we have to incorporate smart small Nukes in the array of new technologies.
The problem of course is it’s incredible accident possibility and 2. Terrorism.
But I’m definitely on board.
I will throw a party if there is no AGW – and I’m open to anybody’s logical science to convince me otherwise. This should not be a religion nor should it be treated lightly as a hoax. We’ll need everybody I think and we have to come to an understanding of the basic premisis.
Thank You Neal for your indulgence – we are all students here.
DirkH (11:58:13) :
I think he meant denial and not cognitive dissonance.
As I’ve said before, I know I’m not being censored but I am getting a bit peeved.
Every post I make goes to the spam bin & as far as I’m aware, I’ve done nothing to deserve that.
When I make a comment in response to some other comment, by the time my comment comes out of the spam bin, everyone has moved on & the comment doesn’t get read, so it may as well be censored.
If my IP has been flagged for some reason, there’s nothing I can do about it as it’s static & part of my ID as moderator on another site.
[Reply: you are not being censored, but your posts have to be rescued. I suspect it is a WordPress glitch, since there are several others in the same situation. ~dbs]
DaveE.
westhoustongeo (13:27:24) :
But, as we all know…weather is not climate!
But climate is climate. The earth has been cooling for years. There has been earlier starting and longer lasting winters all around the world for 3 years. And summers in the Northern Hemisphere have been milder. (I don’t know if this is true of the Southern Hemisphere—can anyone fill me in?) All of these things add up to climate and not weather.
dekitchen (13:36:54) :
“So, now you have discovered that there is no good scientific basis to flaw the CRU you move the focus to the dialogue with climate skeptics.”
What?! C’mon, you’re just pretending to be a troll. You can’t be serious.
Outside of sites like this, where has there been any serious “dialog” with skeptics? You obviously didn’t read the CRU emails, which explained their strategy and the actions they took to marginalize and eliminate skeptical scientists from any debate, and not allowing them to have a voice in scientific journals. And Michael Mann’s organizing the blackballing of a journal that dared to allow a single skeptical paper to be published? That’s OK with you, is it?
The only reason that, as you say, there is no scientific basis to ‘flaw’ the CRU, is due to the fact that the CRU has unethically jettisoned the scientific method in favor of their predetermined AGW agenda. That is not science, that is advocacy through fabricated propaganda. In other words, they deliberately lied for money and status; they invented large parts of the temperature record so that it supported their AGW hypothesis. I suppose that’s OK with you, too? ‘Fake but accurate’ makes it OK, is that your argument?
Those are the HE-ROES that you are trying to defend, while you dismiss Dr Frank’s article as “zombie arguments” without citing a single specific example.
You also disparage Dr Frank’s education as “just not relevant to the subject”. Please note that Dr Frank has a PhD in Meteorology. Which begs the next question: what is your level of education — and in what particular subject? Women’s Studies? Sociology? Home Ec? GED? I would be willing to bet it’s nothing in the hard sciences.
Woo Teva (13:04:12) Nice try!! The emails and all they contain are significant in the extreme. Did you even read them? These guys are in trouble and they know it. As for the oil stuff, it is the only viable alternative at the moment, despite what you might believe. We need energy to move forward and to discover better alternatives. Do you believe we need to go backwards to go forwards? If so, it is you who is insane.
Mike? (sound of crickets chirping, …..)