OT: The global warming hoax exposed?

was pointing to isolated events, like the weather in Connecticut on Tuesday or Katrina or even the thickness of ice on a given chunk of Greenland.

If you use arguments like that, it becomes fair game for someone in Minnesota to say “it was awfully cold this June; it never froze in June before.” Scientists who go along with saying that Katrina was global warming related have a big problem when you then go two years without any hurricanes. None of these anecdotal, isolated events can be attributed to any manmade behavior with any certainty at all.

Looking at climate change is very hard scientifically. We’re talking about an N=1 with high quality data only being collected for the past 50-100 years to study chaotic weather dynamics that typically operate on much longer time scales. At best you can get global average trends; no single events or zip code trends can be explained by any of it. Anyone who argues otherwise (pro or con) has an agenda.

Between the Polar Ice Caps and Ocean Heat Content, a lot of evidence is mounting that the climate system is absorbing more energy than 50 years ago.

To be fair, any scientist with a financially incentivized bias probably deserves to have his/her title in ironic quotations.

the global warming hoax?

these emails reveal that global warming is not real? is that what you gleaned from the emails?

Let me guess: MSM’s not reporting it because of liberal bias, right?

pushing the global warming story beyond its scientific credibility. That said, to dismiss the entire field as fraudulent based solely on this is not appropriate. There are scientists in every field that manipulate data, unfortunately. However, the majority of scientists in general, and I’m sure in the climate field as well, do not do that.

Of more worry than a little graph manipulation are two observations. First, the fact that scientists have allowed politics to enter the climate field is regrettable. At best, negative results regarding climate change cannot get high profile publications and at worst, it is career suicide to be labeled a climate change skeptic. This creates a huge selection bias against half the discussion. While this is sometimes said about the evolution debate as well, the difference is 1) the basic evidence for evolution is overwhelming, whereas the evidence for man’s involvement in climate change is far from it (as a biologist, it is embarrassing to even begin to equate the two); and 2) the health of the global economy does not hinge on the evolution debate.

Second, that climate scientists have stood by and allowed the media and environmental groups to overinterpret their studies. Scientists of all disciplines are guilty of this, because big conclusions by the media brings in lots of $$$ (see the stem cell field). People must remember that without climate change angst, most of these scientists would have big trouble getting funding. There is a fine ethical line between advocating the importance of your work and making promises/predictions that good scientists shouldn’t make. Even the best scientists have trouble walking this line. But I think the climatology field is particularly guilty of both these factors because of the funding pressures.

I would say Gore did more manipulating of data for his movie than the scientists did as suggested by these email.

But the question is, how much is acceptable? We are always going to pollute at some level. Second, how much are you willing to limit the ability of second and third world countries to develop, because India and China and others will soon be contributing much much more pollution than we are. So if the pollution isn’t as threatening as some would have you believe, then is it really worth it to not drastically improve the quality of life for those countries’ citizens?

Finally, while most of us would be willing to pay a little more to be more green, but cap and trade has the potential to do more economic damage than environmental good. I’m not saying I’m against cap and trade; the devil is in the details.

Here’s my point. Even Sharky and everyone else have admitted that the Earth is warming. Assuming 1) you don’t know why it’s warming; and 2) you don’t know what the effect will be, what should be the response?

Here’s my analogy. Say someone tests the water at your home and says it’s different than it used to be. He says it could have no effect, it could be good for you or it could kill you and your entire family – what do you do? Do you just shrug and say fuck it or do you do whatever it takes to keep your family safe?

Same with global warming. The old climate was just fine for humans so we should probably do whatever it takes to get back to that (if possible).

if it were just emails between scientists among each other at this one university. But apparently the emails are between these scientists and much more prominent people and the climate debate.

and if I posted comments from Climate Audit or some global warming skeptic site, you would say “Aha! That’s ridiculous.” Real Climate has a vested interest in downplaying this, no?

and I like how Sharky rejects “scientists” from universities who obviously have an agenda but trusts scientists hired by oil and coal companies because they are obviously unbiased.

I think it’s important to examine how the vested interests of scientists working in a field where lots of money is spent engage in groupthink. And I’d characterize it as data manipulation more than making a prettier picture of the data.

wasn’t in there, I’d have been interested to read that. There’s some encouraging stuff in there about the natural gas supply.

Thank you.

I would assume that most logic driven people don’t disagree with global climate change theory. But many do disagree with the illogical agenda being driven because of it. The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Industry has a commercial where they say alternative energy is not as technologically advanced or have the infrastructure necessary for supporting us. They do sort of have a point. As bad as the fossil fuel industry is and even though price/supply varies; the product does have consistency from years of tinkering and improving the infrastructure. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that we need to begin making the shift to alternative sources. But as of right now, the advances have not been made for the rapid shift being pushed by many on the left.

We need jobs in this country and we especially need jobs to spread to the rural areas of the Great Plains region. That spread is unlikely if the scene is dominated by traditional energy sources or alternative sources. But the prospects could increase if a balance could be created.

First, I very much agree with this statement

At any rate, I think some of the issue hear is that there is a misunderstanding of the language used by the scientists.

It is hard enough for scientists (and I am one) to explain to people what they mean when they are trying. There is pretty much no way that my random communications with other scientists would have any meaning to the general public. (Of course, I’m not telling the general public how to live their lives, but that is another story.)

That telegraph article you link to is kind of crazy and over-the-top (as British news tends to be); but not having paid too much attention to this brouhaha, I wonder how much truth there is to the peer review manipulation stuff. From that little description and other things I’ve heard, it just sounds like the whole field is just screwed up when it comes to that (both sides trying to outmaneuver and discredit each other). Any insights to how much truth there is to that?

Frankly this is disappointing. I’m trying to engage in a discussion. But the motives of people doing the research are definitely a question, no? I mean, no one looks back on tobacco industry research and says, hey, this stuff is still good?

There are all sorts of things which have a concensus and still turn out to be wrong. I’m not denying anything, I’m not calling anyone a member of some grand conspiracy, but for fuck’s sake these emails are asking people to delete emails and stuff.

Duh.

If by

some other anti-business left wing agitator?

Global warming scientists don’t do their research for money. They don’t receive grants. They do all of their research for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

Steps to “reduce global warming” are not “win-win,” per se. Someone always loses when you make this big of a change. If you believe alternative energies are good on their own merits, we can discuss that. But trying to force a change in infrastructure based on climate issues that are not exactly matching scientists models is stupid.

This warm period has lasted about 25,000 years. We are currently in a low solar radiation period of the orbital cycles. This plot shows the effect of the current orbital position on insolation in the lower left of the plot, though it might not be intuitive to read.

They nicely summarize the estimated change in energy from greenhouse gas and solar variability, pointing to the point that greenhouse gas forcing is of the same order as solar forcing.

They have made some assertions that are still far from being based upon causal links, the cosmic ray stuff in particular. So, cosmic rays are very high energy waves and when they hit the earth they penetrate a great distance. This is the main difference between the solar, ultraviolet, and infrared radiation and the radiation from cosmic rays. What this difference means is that the energy is absorbed over a much larger body, making it have little effect on the total energy of the earth. Solar and infrared radiation are absorbed in a very shallow layer, just the surface of the earth. It can then build up energy in that small body, causing the heat energy to change dramatically. UV does the same thing with ozone. The extra heat in the shallow layer either goes away as radiation or causes water to change state or causes things to grow or goes into the atmosphere/ocean as heat.

It’s that difference of the layer over which radiation is absorbed that forces the cosmic radiation idea to look a less direct influence: low-level cloud cover. This study still hasn’t laid out an experimental design that would allow the scientific world to measure the ionization effect on cloud condensation nuclei in the real world. All of the work that, according to them “is now better accepted”, which appears to me to mean there are a few papers published on correlations as opposed affirmation via field measurements and hypothesis testing, is still lacking field observations for verification. Though, I do want to followup on a few references to better understand a model they reference.

I think they’ve contributed useful data to the debate, but I think the next step has yet to be taken, which is to measure, in the locations they say show significant correlation, (1) the actual process of cloud condensation nucleation by cosmic rays, and (2) the condensation caused by other already measured mechanisms, such as sea spray and dust, and (3) the resultant cloud field.

One potentially misleading number in that article is the 1.5 W m^-2 of change from cosmic ray. That number looks pretty impressive next to the 1 to 2 W m^-2 change of solar radiation and 2 W m^-2 of greenhouse gas changes, but the big difference is that the cosmic ray radiation gets absorbed in a much deeper layer rather than at just the surface. So, they are similar numbers but their impact is very different on the earth’s heat content.