If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want. ~ charles the moderator
Scientists misread data on global warming controversy
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Well-publicized troubles have mounted for those forecasting global warming. First, there was last year’s release of hacked e-mails from the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, showing some climate scientists really dislike their critics (investigations are still ongoing). Then there was the recent discovery of a botched prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 in one of the Nobel-Prize-winning 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Instead, the glaciers are only shrinking about as much as glaciers everywhere, twice as fast as they did 40 years ago, suggest results from NASA‘s GRACE gravity-measuring orbiter.
The recent controversies “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science,” according to atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Cicerone was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month on a panel calling for more communication and release of data to rebuild lost trust for scientists. IPCC chiefs have made similar calls in the handling of their reports.
Scientists see reason for worry in polls like one released in December by Fox News that found 23% of respondents saw global warming as “not a problem,” up from 12% in 2005. Also at the AAAS meeting, Yale, American University and George Mason University released a survey of 978 people challenging the notion that people 18 to 35 were any more engaged than their elders on climate change. Statistically, 44% in that age range — matching the national average — found global warming as either “not too important” or “not at all important,” even though they grew up in an era when climate scientists had found it very likely that temperatures had increased over the last century due to fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases.
But what “if” (apologies to Kipling again) scientists are misreading those poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent public-relations black eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake? What’s really happening, suggests polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, is “scientists are over-reacting. It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.”
Krosnick and his colleagues argue that polling suggesting less interest in fixing climate change might indicate the public has its mind on more immediate problems in the midst of a global economic downturn, with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.7%. The AAAS-released survey of young people, for example, finds that 82% of them trust scientists for information on global warming and the national average is 74%.
“Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade,” he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
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RE: Max Hugoson (08:05:15) : “IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE? CO2 is known to be a heat trapping greenhouse gas.”
This happens, I believe, primarily, in three narrow wavelength bands, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM). Most of the effect of any new parcel of CO2 added to the atmosphere is masked by near 100 percent absorption in these particular bands from the CO2 already in the atmosphere.
[Max Hugoson] “To verify the theory of man made global warming, we may compare the change in CO2 in the atmosphere to change in mean global temperature during the same period.”
I do *not* think this constitutes proof. First, I believe, you would have to rule out all other possible coincidental causes, such as recovery from the ‘Little Ice Age’ before you might say this is a proof of your theory or you need to demonstrate that this process is physically capable of driving such an event. As far as I can tell, this has not been done.
Joe (12:06:16) :
The problem is that when these scientists fall, ALL of scientists will be painted by the same brush.
Yes, I completely agree. How incedably stupid of official science to place themselves into such a clef stick.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/in-a-cleft-stick.html
The memberships of the various professional societies need to vote the bums leading them out on their kiesters.
Mike Ramsey
A C Osborn (11:01:48) :
‘Wren (10:05:20) :
But that is how CO2 was blamed in the first place because they did match for a few years.
I understand that’s when the magical, mystical “Amplification” number of 2.5 came into being. It was the only way to “Balance the Books”.
John McCain has switched — or at least backed away from being a warmist to being a luke-warmist.
royfomr (14:17:26) :
Your comment made me think of the quote below:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. ”
H. L. Mencken
R Gates
Quote: “but you can say it is likely to very high degree of certainty.”
Exactly like my invisible glass…
….and they would both be 100% wrong.
….and both would not match observations to support either hypothesis in the real world.
R Gates:
So AGW scientists have made specific prediction, and so far the preponderance of the evidence supports their theory. Only the data…not the pundits, nor politicians, nor the public opinion will change that…
We know you believe this to be true. But that is because you believe the data of GISS and Hansen et al.
I don’t trust their figures. Too many “fiddles” have been exposed for that. I find it totally disgusting that my scientists in my country (NIWA) are prepared to blatantly “fix” the result they want. Because I don’t trust their figures, I remain unconvinced in AGW.
That the 2020’s will be warm is not proof of AGW in any case. The world has been warming for a couple of centuries. You know as well as I do that radically accelerated warming is required. And the figures so far for that are not at all persuasive, even using GISS etc.
Not only that, you need to show that it is a bad thing. People are prone to assuming all change is bad, but that doesn’t make it true. The warming of the last century has been a good thing. Perhaps another degree will make the world better.
I would also like you to consider whether your moderate response here is what the hard-core AGW advocates are proposing. They (Greenpeace, Gore, Mann etc) don’t hold with “the evidence will prove them right” They demand immediate, decisive action NOW, or we are doomed.
Polls are only important at a political level and as for on the science level it is irrelevant in the long run as the truth always comes out. We can use polls against the Warmists as a hammer but that does not make us right. The only thing that will make us right is weather over time.
he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
Now I wonder why that is? Phhhtttt!
old construction worker (14:43:05): “I understand that’s when the magical, mystical “Amplification” number of 2.5 came into being. It was the only way to “Balance the Books”.
The imaginary magical mystery amplification number isn’t just 2.5, it’s 3.783 (4.54/1.2)
but don’t take my word for it, here it is out of the mouths of Gavin, Hansen, & Co. at GISS:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/03/gavin-schmidts-good-science-part-2.html
” On the flip side, the acidification of the oceans”
Please don’t say this.
Ocean pH 8-8.2 has a long way to go to become acid.
Saying “ocean acidification” is just more alarmism, and a catch phrase designed to instill fear.
Again, it’s a product of “computer models”, and we do not know enough about that either to model anything.
Even the most hysterical “robust” models still leave the ocean as very alkaline .
The AGW theory has morphed into a secular religion, with the high priests of “climate change” sheparding their flock of True Believers and excommunicating those who deviate from the sacred canons, question the existence of the Greenhouse CO2 God, or dispute the apocalyptic epistles of human-induced global warming.
More here on the Church of Global Warming. The Reformation is underway.
http://bit.ly/cLnKGS
Pete H (16:02:58) :
There is a book:
“A Slobbering Love Affair”
by Bernard Goldberg
From Amazon;
“Goldberg shows how the mainstream media’s hopelessly one-sided coverage of President Obama has shredded America’s trust in journalism and endangered our free society.”
I would say it’s certainly true, in the case of CAGW.
RE:Max Hugoson (08:05:15) : “IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE?”
I see I completely missed the point of your article in my earlier post. I humbly apologize.
The trolls have regrouped. The place is crawling with them.
They had been knocked back on their heels by ClimateGate and had been in hiding under the bridge. But this ‘warmest decade on record’ combined with the high UAH anomaly for two months in a row seems to have given them reason to come out.
I guess the deception practiced among top global warming scientists that ClimateGate conclusively revealed doesn’t mean anything to them—or they’d still be knocked back on their heels. But that’s par for the course for them since real science didn’t mean anything to them in the first place.
So my question now is: what will they do when UAH, and all other data sets, drop precipitously for months when El Nino ends?
Jimbo (15:10:54) :
The only thing that will make us right is weather over time.
It could be that the weather is what’s making the change in the polls already.
wow more global warming
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Adverts on TV here in Australia state that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 and a website, 100places.com I think it was. I wonder if they know this is BS?
Joe (12:06:16):
The problem is that when these scientists fall, ALL of scientists will be painted by the same brush.
I believe that’s what will happen in the end, which is both sad and fitting. I say fitting because I believe the majority of scientists are not so convinced or are against the AGW thesis but are not speaking out in protest. Even if only say 50% of the scientists are in this category, they all should be standing up and participate in “defrocking” the AGW fraud. I understand their pressures and their preoccupation with their work. However, it doesn’t excuse them. As is often said “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.
R. Gates (14:35:11): Mike… It was a good thing that there was some alarmism when it was recognized that flurocarbons [sic] were depleting the ozone layer. Scientists found the link, and something political was done about it.
No, R, the fluorocarbons alarm was another hoax. No one, not even scientists, have found fluorocarbons in the atmosphere above Antarctica. The hypothesis was never proved, and the elimination of fluorocarbons has not affected the ozone hole one iota.
However, DuPont made $billions because their patent on Freon was running out. And asthma victims have suffered enormously because the non-CFL inhalers are less effective. The CFL scare caused huge harm, no good, except for windfall profits to big corporations, and is the perfect parallel to AGW Alarmism.
Jim and Mr. Gore, and the rest have a role to play, and honestly and passionately believe they are right. It is naive and a gross misunderstanding of these men to think it is about money, fame, research dollars or anything else.
I did not mention the motivations of Al and James, but since you bring it up, how do you know what those are? Are you a confidante? Are you their psychiatrist? Let’s not be deaf, dumb, and blind here. It is plainly obvious that both men are deeply entwined financially in Alarmist carbon trading scams and both men are media hogs. Was Al’s movie an accident? Gimme a break, R!!!!
Personally, I straddle the fence on the AGW issue in terms of outcome.
How convenient for you. You have the “science” wired, but the outcomes are not your concern. Are you also in the bio-warfare industry? An arms trader? A bomb-maker? Do you think science is a-political? Are you context-challenged?
Get real, R. Come down off your cloud.
Arthur Glass (06:08:56) :
“And here I had foolishly been thinking that the central concern of natural science was detemining truths about the structure and dynamics of the physical world. Silly me! The central concern of natural scientists, apparently, is to enhance and enforce the prestige of natural scientists….”
As soon as scientists were paid to be scientists and as soon as scientists were given directives from others “the central concern of natural science to detemine truths about the structure and dynamics of the physical world.” went out the window and “political agendas” took its place.
R. Gates (14:00:38)
I come across theories that are real head scratchers at times in it’s total lack of common sense.
Example: Hydro Power Generation claims they are 92% efficient.
Where did they get this number and how was it arrived at?
No one knew just that this claim was over 100 years old.
Do you want to know how it was arrived at?
150 years ago when the hydro turbine was created, it would not turn unless there was a space around the edge of the turbine. An 8% space. So if the water does not touch this 8% then it must be 92% efficient.
When real actual angles of deflection math and the rotational descepancies are calculated to this turbine, the actual efficiency is less than 2% at harnessing energy out of the water.
Who knew?
Patrick Davis (17:11:32) :
I wish there were commercials on tv for WattsUpWithThat.com!
Patrick Davis (17:11:32) :
Quote: “Adverts on TV here in Australia state that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 and a website, 100places.com I think it was. I wonder if they know this is BS?”
Patrick, they didn’t care when they knew that all the other things were BS before.
advocacy
.
A C Osborn (11:01:48) :
Wren (10:05:20) :
Causal relationships don’t require the dependent variable to change in lock step with one independent variable with other independent variables are involved.
But that is how CO2 was blamed in the first place because they did match for a few years.
Of course you could take the other stated reason “we couldn’t think of anything esle to blame”
***********************************
Take this one step further as some posts on “real climate” do: a few years of correspondence between the climate models and temperatures are proof that they are correct.
The only climate model I would give any credence to is one that gives some reasonable approximation of the past ice ages, their periodicity, and the Daansgard-Oeschger events in between.