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[Edvaard]

Fiasco wrote on Mon, 30 November 2009 18:07

Jon, you and others may not believe me, but I see both sides of this and the single most frustrating thing to me is I can't trust anyone. I am not some conspiracy theorist, undignified bull in a china shop, under educated, over segregated dummy. There are legitimate doubts and unanswered questions regarding these issues. There always are in science.

True enough, which is why I brought this to attention;

Edvaard wrote on Sun, 29 November 2009 19:08

Media oversimplification aside, at the university my overtly conservative Geology professor stated that he and everyone else in the department know that anthropogenic global warming is real, and that the Geo-sciences academic journals argue about various mechanisms and particulars, not about the phenomenon itself.

Again, they know that the phenomenon is real, based on many many points of evidence. They debate amongst themselves about such things as what threshold level would trigger what and how much response, time lines, particulars of various mechanisms involved, etc., but NOT about the reality of planetary equlibria-changing exogenous CO2 inputs that nature will soon find need to make some adjustment for that will be quite uncomfortable for humans.

Quote:

Everything has become politics, and it worries me greatly. Until I perceive no ulterior motives on any side, I remain doubtful and suspicious.

And that is just the way the media like it, and they have succeeded famously in this instance in politicizing the issue and having everyone now suspicious of science, even if people are not aware that that is what's happened.

They act as if the two different scenarios are political candidates and deserve equal airtime or something.

In the actual slow scientific investigation itself, many possibilities were investigated, and after some decades things have conduced to the conclusion that this is very real.


The ulterior motives are all with the media and the book writers, and not the %99.9 of the scientists in the lab and in the field who are not on those shows.

If people are waiting on the media or other public pseudo pundits to shed signs of ulterior motive before we take corrective action, then we ARE in trouble.

[Jon Hodgson]

One additional point.

Anyone who clings to a "common sense" reason why the scientists have got it wrong (in error as opposed to a conspiracy), like "it's the sun", or "it was warmer in the medieval period" or whatever isn't showing much common sense at all.

Common sense tells us that if it seems that obvious to you, and thousands of laymen like you, the professionals will long ago have either thought of it themselves, or heard one of you talking about it, and investigated it, and as a result either included it in the models or rejected it.

I suspect everyone here has at some point had someone from outside their field commenting on their personal area of expertise and saying something like "well if you do xxxx then yyyy will happen because zzzz, it's OBVIOUS, just plain common sense"... and you've thought "well, it might SEEM obvious to you, but only because you don't know about this, this and this, if you did, it would be obvious to you that yyyy isn't going to happen".

[ericbridenbaker]

About a year ago here in Canada, we had the parliament platforming around "Carbon Tax". Overall, I'd say this was something that didn't help them, or climate concerns as many people didn't really understand the concept.

[Edvaard]

Thanks for the realclimate link Jon.

I'm lazy, I just listened to my Geology professors and took them at their word.

But to the question of media integrity you hinted at, I came upon this information through the realclimate site;

http://lightblueline.org/scientist-arctic-screaming

which refers to one of a series of climate change articles CNN did in late '07 through most of '08.

Then, lo and behold, look what happened in December of '08;

"CNN Cuts Entire Science, Tech Team"

   http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/cnn_cuts_entire_science_t ech_t.php

and;

   http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/science_groups_protest_cn n_cut.php


Sheer coincidence, no doubt.

No surprise, the link to the original "Arctic Is Screaming" article get's you a "page not found" response from CNN.

Fiasco wrote on Mon, 30 November 2009 18:07

Everything has become politics, ...

-“We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” said CNN spokesperson Barbara Levin.-


There you have it, Fiasco. Barbara herself is telling us that what you say is true.

But it doesn't matter if CNN or NBC or Fox or BBC want to call it ping pong and toss it to the sports department, they only control the public's perception of reality, not reality itself.

Everything in media is more and more narrowed to the "opposing view points" scheme, because it riles and divides people, and science is becoming more and more an inconvenience to that end.

[fiasco ( P.M.DuMont )]

Thank you Edvaard and Jon for not being condescending,
and I admire your intellect and passion regarding this and other issues.

That being said...

I will listen to you, look into what you say and the information you provide with an open mind. I always do.

But I can't for the life of me understand how it is you don't absolutely fear the Government.
Make no doubt about it, it grows when nothing else does.
And I fear their motives.

[Jon Hodgson]

Fiasco wrote on Tue, 01 December 2009 23:12

Thank you Edvaard and Jon for not being condescending, and I admire your intellect and passion regarding this and other issues. That being said... I will listen to you, look into what you say and the information you provide with an open mind. I always do. But I can't for the life of me understand how it is you don't absolutely fear the Government. Make no doubt about it, it grows when nothing else does. And I fear their motives.

I do fear government (I won't say THE government because this forum has people with several different governments, and sometimes the government of other countries scares me more than my own).

In this situation I fear that government will not do enough, or do the wrong things, or do what governments so often do and use a situation, real or imagined, to increase their control... not necessarily because they conciously want to be authoritarian, but because they don't have the imagination to achieve things without a big stick.

But this isn't primarily about politics, it's about science, we first have to understand what we're dealing with, before we can judge government's actions on it.

We need to ask..

1) Does the scientific community as a whole think that AGW is an issue?
2) Do they think it's a big issue?
3) Are they right?
4) What can and must be done about it?
5) Is government doing the right thing given the answers to 1-4?

Looking at what's been published, the mechanisms of the scientific community, some common sense etc, the only answer I can come to for (1) is an emphatic YES. The majority of climate scientists honestly think there's a problem.
The answer to (2) is the same.
As for (3), well that's a bit harder to judge, like I said maybe next year they'll find some factor or mechanism that's been missed. Maybe nature will respond in an unexpected way, maybe we'll be struck by a CO2 sucking asteroid, whatever. But right now the best minds in the business are pretty darned convinced that we're in deep shit, so where are you going to place your bets?

To me the only sensible attitude to take is that AGW is most probably a real problem that I should be really concerned about...

so I should learn more about the answer to (4), and then judge government accordingly, not stick my head in the sand because government scares me.

[compasspnt]

Interesting new stories, showing somewhat of both "sides..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article694 1168.ece


http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/12/climate-scept ics-get-it-wrong-1.html

[ericbridenbaker]

Interesting reads. Warming is such a huge and controversal issue these days. The idea that greenhouse gasses, specifically CO2 could affect the earth's temperature has been around for some time and has also received consistent criticism.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

[Skullsessions]

........."In another e-mail, Professor Jones writes that he used a "trick" to "hide the decline in a chart detailing recent global temperatures." .....

HA HA.....ROTFLMAO

They've been caught.  I love it.

They've been lying through their teeth to keep the funding flowing and they act like THEY've been violated because someone saw their emails.

They're not scientists.  They're criminals.

[Jon Hodgson]

Skullsessions wrote on Thu, 03 December 2009 14:19

........."In another e-mail, Professor Jones writes that he used a "trick" to "hide the decline in a chart detailing recent global temperatures." ..... HA HA.....ROTFLMAO They've been caught.  I love it. They've been lying through their teeth to keep the funding flowing and they act like THEY've been violated because someone saw their emails. They're not scientists.  They're criminals.

from

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cr u-hack/

Quote:

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

[thinman]

Skullsessions wrote on Thu, 03 December 2009 08:19

........."In another e-mail, Professor Jones writes that he used a "trick" to "hide the decline in a chart detailing recent global temperatures." .....

Interesting thread, everyone.

Regarding Phil Jones, here is another of his emails, wherein he admits the earth has not warmed since 1998.

Why can't Jones be candid about the lack of warming? Who is afraid of the truth in this case?

Here is the reference for the email below:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filen ame=1120593115.txt



From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: John Christy <john.christy@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005

John,
There has been some email traffic in the last few days to a week - quite
a bit really, only a small part about MSU. The main part has been one of
your House subcommittees wanting Mike Mann and others and IPCC
to respond on how they produced their reconstructions and how IPCC
produced their report.
In case you want to look at this see later in the email !

Also this load of rubbish !

This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached

article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no
uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only
7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant.

The Australian also alerted me to this blogging ! I think this is the term ! Luckily

I don't live in Australia.

[1] http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/06/first-look-at-scs-msu-v n52.html
Unlike the UK, the public in Australia is very very na

[Edvaard]

Quote:

Regarding Phil Jones, here is another of his emails, wherein he admits the earth has not warmed since 1998.

These scientists are trained in discovering, measuring, and interpreting data, not in PR or expressing themselves in words at the highest level when hurriedly responding to incessant carping and perpetual sabotaging of science by political agitators with seemingly endless financial resources. This just one of several instances of poor choice of words in these e-mails.

The global temperatures reached a very high peak in 1998 but after the succeeding trough the temperatures continued the trend of an overall rise. To say that we have not reached that high peak since is not the same as saying "the earth has cooled since 1998." The fact is that the trend of rising temp. has continued since 1999-2000, just not yet to the point of reaching the record peak of 1998.


From the link in the above post;










Pardon my statistics-speak here, but please note that the least squares regression lines (the 'trend lines') in these graphs have a positive slope. Not flat, not negative, but a positive slope.

Leave it to the well supported denier organizations to twist data that actually indicate a warming trend, such as a a record warm year, into "proof" that the earth is "cooling" because we don't set a new record high for global temperature each succeeding year.


I am all for greater transparency in this matter.

I say congress and the EU should obtain all the e-mails of these denier organizations and, further, trace their sources of funding.

Now that would certainly be interesting.

Definitely more so than the "interesting" -'two sides of the argument'- silliness.

[Edvaard]

Addendum;


The five year mean surface air anomaly (more meaningful than simple year-to-year comparison) for the continental US has been above +.50 in four different years from 1900 to 1996; 1932-33 and 1988-89.

In this 97 year span, the greatest increase in the five year mean was +.60 in 1932.


http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt


In the 11 year span from 1996 to 2006 the five year means were +.46, .57, .62, .82, .93,  .81, .72, .76, .84, .88, .76.

Note that the last four of these figures do not include the '98 "big bump" at all.

[thinman]

Edvaard wrote on Sat, 05 December 2009 14:11

Quote: Regarding Phil Jones, here is another of his emails, wherein he admits the earth has not warmed since 1998. These scientists are trained in discovering, measuring, and interpreting data, not in PR or expressing themselves in words at the highest level when hurriedly responding to incessant carping and perpetual sabotaging of science by political agitators with seemingly endless financial resources. This just one of several instances of poor choice of words in these e-mails.

So this noted scientist is some sort of a savant and unable, while composing an email, to make a coherent statement about whether the earth has warmed or cooled. That's a pretty basic grammar, and he states that the earth has cooled, not that it hasn't warmed so much—as you say.

Additionally, Jones had previously stated that, rather than comply with the FOIA, he would destroy the raw data if necessary, to keep it from being exposed to scrutiny. And subsequently, he did just that!

He (they at CRU) destroyed the raw data, rendering their conclusions not credible. Jones stated he did not want to expose the data if people were going to try to disprove it.  Isn't that exactly the criteria used to prove experimentation, by trying to disprove it?

Is it any wonder so many of us are skeptical?

Additionally, the charts you and others post from NASA, i.e. James Hansen, are subject to the same doubt in that Hansen also refuses to release his data. He tried to conceal the 1932-33 high temperatures you refer to until he was found out by another scientist.

Now, I was sincere when I said that found this thread interesting. You found it necessary to seemingly be snide by using my word "interesting" in quotes as though I had used it in a duplicitous manner.  You further condescend when you say that that my pointing out a different point of view is "silliness". Were you also referring to Terry's post above where he gave links to both sides of the issue?  I wasn't aware that the issue was settled. I am open to an honest discussion; it appears you are not.

Neither is Phil Jones or Hansen. Hansen has stated that anyone who disagrees with his theories should be tried for crimes against humanity. You said you would like to have governments seize information from agitator groups with endless supplies of money (George Soros?), so your affinity to their points of view is not a surprise.

I am not enthusiastic about a society where governments have such powers.  

When Al Gore, Hansen, et. al. openly share their data, move into 1700 sq ft houses, eschew private jets, curtail the acquisition of massive sums of money through carbon credit corporations etc, then maybe they will have some credibility. If 90% of humanity is soon to perish, I would think they could put their egos aside, put their data out there (unfortunately, no longer possible at East Anglia) so we can all know the truth. If they REALLY BELIEVE it, that's what they should do.

Until then, based on the behavior of these scientific believers, I am skeptical.

[Edvaard]

The snide  was towards the media in general, not to anyone's remarks here. If you read my other posts you know what I think of the media. Terms such as "interesting" and "both sides" etc. occur in most any blog or forum on this issue, not just in this one.

Al Gore and his wife run a business at home, it is more than just a place to sleep. Others in hi profile positions take private jets all the time, so why does Al Gore's use of same trouble you so much in particular?

Again, let's just have it ALL out here; all the other scientists who come to the same conclusion that are not under media spotlight and having their e-mails illegally hacked (which, by the way, no arrests for as yet), and most especially, the e-mails of the antagonists and who is funding their efforts.

And no, the government doesn't need to get the e-mails themselves as long as someone else can hack the denier's e-mails with the same legal immunity that apparently protects the other hackers in this situation. That was just a rhetorical statement in any case because I assure you, none of the media nor congress are interested in tracing the sources of funding there. Too much common ground in that regard for that to ever come about.

And I don't know where this 'fear of government' and not wanting them to have such and such powers comes from, outside of one's  living in a cave. The government already has these powers and much more, and has used them for decades. While everybody was worried about Big Brother, Big Brother's Daddy (Haliburton) ran the country for 8 years. While the media dutifully distracted attention elsewhere, habeas corpus said bye-bye forever.  

I do not fear any of it, because I have been aware of the reality of the situation for a long time, long before 8 or 10 years ago.

I am definitely not an Al Gore fan here, I'm glad he didn't win in 2000, I sure wish that anybody but him or Bush were in the running at the time. But I don't understand all this carping and niggling about his house and jet, which are both means to his business, with not a peep about the lifestyles of those with oil interests, who impose on our government in the most damaging and anti-democratic way.

So then let's not have the government seize anything here (as if that were a realistic concern in this issue anyway, which I assure you it is not), but why are people not calling out for the same disclosure concerning the "other side" if we are so concerned about the truth as we claim to be? No curiosity at all about that, given the record and history of the other "interested party" here?

Again, I don't fear any of it, because I haven't been under the delusion that who we elect actually runs things for a long time anyway. I am more "concerned" by the interests at play, and by how much and in what way they they invest themselves into the determination of affairs in our country. If the carbon credit corporations were to have shop opened up all the way, their total market capitalization would still fall several trillions short of that of the oil interests, and the amount of money taken out of them by whomever would amount to a trickle compared to the amount derived from oil interests. And I estimate it to be somewhat less likely that the carbon credit folks would feel need to drag the country into a war and gut various constitutional protections to maintain their status, unlike the other party in this affair.

As for the poor fellows caught up in so many mis-speaks in their e-mails, I say just go ahead and fire them. There are plenty more with excellent scientific qualifications at least a few of whom would exercise better judgment.

Sorry if insult was taken there, my frustration at people harping on the political more than scientific concerns perhaps skewing my ability to keep proper focus sometimes.