The following report is from Benny Peiser’s blog The Global Warming Policy Foundation:
It is a year since the so-called Climategate e-mails were leaked. Since then, we have had freezing winters in Europe and the US, and revelations of gross misrepresentations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The lasting impression is of massive corruption of science.
Leaked from the Climate Research Unit in England, the e-mails showed the scientists behind the climate scare plotting to: hide, delete and manipulate data; to denigrate scientists presenting different views; to force journals to publish only papers promoting climate alarm; to subvert “peer review” into “pal review”; and make the reports of the IPCC nothing but alarmist propaganda. The corruption spread through governments, universities, scientific societies and journals. You have to look back to the Lysenko episode in the Soviet Union in the 1940s (when a crank persuaded the Soviet establishment that agriculture did not follow Darwinian evolution) to find such perversion of science.
The worst nonsense after the scandal was this: “Well, some climate scientists committed a few minor transgressions but the basic science is sound.” In fact, the basic science is nonexistent.
There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way. The slight warming of the past 150 years is no different from previous natural warming periods, such as the worldwide medieval warm period from about 900 to 1200AD… [Read the rest here]
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Tonyb,
My apologies, it seems to be my fault that Joel posted a snarky comment at grant fosters blog.☺
FYI: irregardless is not really a word. Either regardless or irrespective mean what Joel was intending, curiously in a sentence in which he mentions his own intelligence. The ‘ir’ in front of regardless would actually make its meaning the opposite of what people often intend, i.e.. the ‘ir’ and ‘less’ create a double negative.
Mark
Joel Shore says:
December 4, 2010 at 10:08 am
Actually, no, this is not what is “well-understood.” What you are attempting to cite, and failing at it quite miserably, is the law of large numbers (and, in a related context, the central limit theorem.) The errors need to be much, much more than simply “random-distributed” for the LLN to apply. The LLN states that the sample average of independent, identically distributed random variables will converge to the true mean if the sample size is sufficiently large. I suggest you look up the distinction and familiarize yourself with the implications of independence and identical distributions.
Mark
Hi Joel 10.08
I am well aware of the theory that if you multiply one horribly incorrect piece of data by a further one thousand pieces of horribly wromg data you will end up with something almost perfect.
That reminds me, I must finish reading Alice in Wonderland. I like the bit where down is up and up is down. A metaphor for climate science really 🙂
Tonyb
Not sure what you are referring to Smokey. I don’t think I have posted anything at Tamino’s blog for months. As near as I can tell, tonyb’s riff about Tamino is completely unrelated to his first sentence referring to this comment of mine here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/03/a-year-after-climategate-the-corruption-of-science-persists/#comment-543370 as being snarky.
[Reply: I intended to delete your comment per your request, and got sidetracked. My sincere apologies. That post has now been removed. ~dbs, mod.]
###
Thanks ☺ I understand about getting sidetracked. I’m an aspie and my whole life is nothing but a sidetrack. If I was doing the mod, I am pretty sure I would be getting sidetracked by the very comments I was supposed to be modding.
Smokey: “It can’t be repeated often enough that the alarmist crowd runs and hides from the Scientific Method like Dracula runs and hides from the dawn. They are both evil, eh?”
Actually, a recent re-appraisal of the evidence has shown that Dracula is more misunderstood than evil. So the garlic-and-crucifix defence is a bit of an anachronism in these enlightened times.
Speaking of enlightenemt, I notice that Realclimate has an interesting update on the Keenslyside claim of gobal cooling until 2015 from a couple of years back, which caused a bit of a stir in the media.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/so-how-did-that-global-cooling-bet-work-out/
The Keenslyside scenario doesn’t seem to be working out so far. Realclimate has even offered Keenslyside or co-authors an opportunity for comment. The Scientific Method in action.
Roger Knights says:
December 4, 2010 at 9:21 am
… Don’t forget that the planet has two hemispheres.
Four, actually.
Mathematically – probably an infinite number of hemispheres 🙂
Smokey says:
December 3, 2010 at 4:07 pm
There does happen to be an Antarctic – a fact that escapes the notice of the CAGW contingent, which is fixated on Arctic ice.
—————-
I think you missed the point Smokey.
I am beating on people who promote the idea that their local weather conditions are indicative of what is happening globally.
The Arctic is mentioned because it is changes in Arctic circulation patterns which are affecting the UK and Norway.
So are you suggesting that Antarctic circulation pattern changes are affecting the UK and Norway?
Regards from the smart-a—- teenager.
Roger Knights says:
December 4, 2010 at 9:21 am
RoHa says:
And a freezing winter in South America! Don’t forget that the planet has two hemispheres.
Four, actually.
————————-
Tsk Tsk picky picky!!!!!
Even pickier:
So 4 hemispheres = 2 spheres
“woodNfish says:
December 3, 2010 at 10:50 am
Mike is either a rube or a troll, or maybe he is both. You will do your best by ignoring him.”
I disagree that he should be ignored. There may be many who read these things who are on the fence. And while we may not convince Mike, we may influence others who may either agree with Mike or who are unsure. It should be very clear that as a group, we have no problem defending our position.
Mike says: “So, the ice ages did not happen?” Yes they happened. However the swings in temperature were not so extreme that life disappeared from Earth. Furthermore, the ice ages were due to Milankovitch cycles and not due to CO2 changes.
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm
Joel Shore,
James Hansen and colleagues said much the same thing in setting out the ‘Hansen Alternative Scenario’ almost a decade ago, and suggested that mitigating other forcing factors was likely to be technically easier, more cost-effective, or be accompanied by substantial co-benefits. Example: carbon soot from inefficient combustion of biofuels, source of the Asian brown cloud, much regional warming and the death of 150,000 mostly women and children annually from indoor air pollution. But this was not the preferred problem-solution set and Hansen cam under attack from the likes of the luvvies at the Union for Concerned Scientists. Since then, he’s largely stuck to the preferred meme of decarbonisation.
The same political climate surrounding climate science applies to all who question the narrative – be it the missing evidence for increasing water vapour, the missing ‘hot spot’, or whatever. Fact is, most climate science projections or predictions rely on statements of ‘could’ or ‘consistent with models’ and downplay enormously the extent of the uncertainty that Penner et al rightly highlight. It even makes a difference to the policy instrument chosen: most policy-makers believe that the scientists can tweak the atmosphere to a certain level of carbon dioxide and dial a certain (stable) chosen degree of warming. They are seriously deluded – which is why a tax is preferable to cap and trade.
But actually, I was using you as an example of someone committing the genetic fallacy: SourceWatch indeed! Six degrees of Exxon Mobil! Example: Exxon gave $10,000 of their $125m community altruism one year to the Fraser Institute. Ross McKittrick is a fellow of the Fraser Institute. Bingo! In the pay of Big Oil! Let’s ignore the $25m pa they gave to Stanford, or the $1b they spend annually on climate change in their operations. Even if all $10,000 went into a Swiss bank account for McKittrick, it has no bearing on whether he is right or wrong. To think it does, as SourceWatch does, is to commit something called the genetic fallacy.
HenryP says: (December 4, 2010 at 7:50 am)
Nobody?
This argument is equivalent to saying, “Because I have never been in a car crash in the past, I have no need for seatbelts in the future.”
The whole point of the “A” in “AGW” is that modern climate change is different from past changes in climate. For example, never in the past has ½ trillion tons of carbon been converted from a solid form to gaseous within ~150 years.
Why do you think “modern warming” would affect Spain differently depending on whether it is “natural” or anthropogenic in origin?
HenryP@Anonymous Howard
I am sure you missed what Smokey said earlier. It is up to the person making the claim that my carbon foot print is bad to prove this to me. I have looked everywhere for the relevant evidence and could not find it. It is only stories and some odd calculations (which do not even include all the relevant corrections for overlaps). What they did at the IPCC is look at the problem from the wrong end. They assumed carbon dioxide is the problem….of global warming. They even worked out a forcing for CO2 based on the increase in that gas since 1750. But I say it is not the CO2…….
The car crash story does not apply at all because I am actually finding that carbon dioxide is good, the net effect of its cooling and warming is probably zero or close to zero, and (natural) global warming at current rates is not bad….
Here is my story:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
read it and then you come back to me with your “proof”
Obviously you missed my argument about the data from that station in Spain. I said that if global warming is caused by green house gases, you would expect the average yearly minimum temperatures to have risen by 0.7 degreesC per 100 years (if that is the correct rate of global warming) or even a bit more. But that line is perfect straight from 1980.
If you were a real Howard and not a coward you bring me some similar data from other stations that either proves or disproves what I am saying, i.e. modern warming is largely not caused by human activities.
Don’t come to me with stories. I have heard enough of those…
I notice that Sharper00 has left for greener pastures at Sceptical Science. I suggest you go there as well. You two belong together.
Aynsley Kellow says:
Well, you’ve gone from distorting science to just distorting history. So, I suppose we can think of that as progress of some sort. Yes, Hansen et al. argued that in the short term, reducing these other components could buy us time but Hansen never saw that as an excuse not to start to take serious steps to reduce CO2. In the long run, the CO2 is going to dominate because the CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere whereas those other contributors do not.
Are you seriously trying to argue that the Fraser Institute does not have a strong ideological bent? Don’t you think the skeptic world is a bit upside down when the entire scientific community in a field, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy, etc. are all said to be “corrupt” while organizations like Fraser Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation are actually taken seriously? It is called “poisoning the well”…basically, making defamatory arguments against the acknowledged experts so you can replace them with people like Andrew Kenny and Benny Peiser whose expertise is essentially nil but who subscribe to your ideology.
Joel Shore says: (December 6, 2010 at 4:32 pm)
Interesting that you posted this comment just before this article at RealClimate was posted:
At the risk of spoiling the surprise, it turns out time cannot be bought, only wasted.
Anonymopus Howard, you and Sharper00 are the ones here who are making claims here that more carbon dioxide is bad for us. I asked you before, where is your proof , and you did not answer.
Here are my results:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
read it and then you come back to me with all the results of your tests that proves that the net effect of carbon dioxide is warming rather than cooling and then we can talk again.
Anonymous Howard says:
What can I say? I taught Ray Pierrehumbert everything he knows! More seriously though, thanks for pointing out that post of Ray’s and it is nice to see one of the experts making the same point I did, with considerably more detail and support to back it up.