The 'Climategate' travesty

Gareth

There is hope yet [url]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/legal-brief-filed-in-mann-uva-emails-case/[/url]
It is clear that there is ample reason to believe that Mann may have committed a violation of FATA [Fraud Against the Taxpayer Act] while he was at the university,”

Dixon

This is nothing other than I expected at the outset.

You dont get anywhere in academia without ones nose becoming permanently stained brown.

The same no doubt for civil servants. Between the two of them, what would you expect as an outcome?

East Anglia and Penn State (state) are only what used to be called polytechnics anyway. If the cutting gets under way can we hope to see such insitutions lose their public subsidy?

Hysteria

Meh...we are going to be stuffed with tax and green puffery anyway. After all - if nothing (outside the norm) happens, the AGW crowd will say "see - we have achieved stability - our plans worked like we told you". If we get the tax and we still get climate change (either hotter or colder) - the AGW crowd will say "see - but for all these measures we imposed things would have been sooooo much worse".

No - due to the vested interests so neatly summed up by the article above, I reckon we will just have to take our lumps - I see no way of stopping this bandwagon......

Frank P

Thanks Melanie - I needed that. There has been a dearth a reaction to this criminal cover -up. As ever: a seminal response to unadulterated bs. I wonder why Lawson back-tracked a bit? Vested interest I s'pose?

Frank Lee Meidere

Thank you for having the courage to write this, and for helping to bring the travesty of these "investigations" to light.

David Booth

Is it not a criminal offence to try to thwart the Freedom of Information Act by destroying data following a request as the "University" of East Anglia appears to have done.
Just a thought!

Frank P

BTW, by Lawson - I meant Lord Lawson - not Mark Lawson mentioned in your post - also not be confused with Mark Lawson the British journo and TV culture vulture. Lots of sons of the Law about, aren't there? At least Dominic Lawson is on-side on this issue.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6982310.ece

Augustus

1,073 private emails cannot lie.
And all of them leading members of the climate research community. These people weren't just scientific members of an objective climate research community, they were political activists, using data as some kind of personal shrine, and intent above all on protecting it from the critical eyes of detractors. Well, the mission failed, and the entire scientific discipline, Nobel Peace Prizes included, has been corrupted. No other branch of science is now so mistrusted, seen to be so corrupted by politicization, and so obviously
a puppet of powerful economic interests, that citizens the world over will increasingly become less willing to pay for costly and unproven methods to protect the climate. In short, the revelations were so damaging that nobody can be expected to believe in these people any more? Scientists should not dabble in politics, because that is one profession where results count only, not beliefs.

Mike Haseler

It's just like WMD, the dodgy dossier and inquiry after inquiry after inquiry each of which supposedly cleared Blair of lying and none of which were believed by the public.

What beggars belief is that they thought the public would be so gullible as to believe yet another series whitewash inquiries.

Stuart Seacole Smith

Sounds like there's a strong case for an investigation into the investigation! And maybe it could be done properly this time? But no... of course not, cuz the man's got the stacked result he wanted.

And team responsibility does not equal exoneration, it equals institutionalised deception. In a fair world,they'd all have to go. And pay back the salaries and grants they fraudulently accepted. In any case, whether they like it or not, the reputations of these "scientists" are toast.

Bob, son of Bob

Whilst I would expect nothing more than 100% loyalty to AGW in organisations like the BBC, shame on the sheep journalists in newspapers who said nothing and just reported the official line, and still do. There is no excuse for them.

The AGW zealots have been very successful in schools - school children might not be able to spell or do long multiplication, but they certainly know about global warming.

How the free speech of the internet must enrage the current establishment, as represented by the BBC. They will probably try to regulate that too, to filter out 'untruths'.

I wonder how much the free speech of the internet is responsible for slowing down and possibly stopping the AGW fraud? And Fox News radio presenters I have listened to on the internet have always been sceptics.

Of course, if voters had put MPs of integrity into power they would have halted this scandal long ago, along with the other scandals Melanie Phillips often writes about such as crime. We are all ultimately dependent on the wisdom of the voters. This makes me pessimistic as the average intelligence is going down fast.

Peter McCloskey

Oh -- and if anyone is still muttering about 'melting ice-caps' or 'hottest year since records began', read this.

It is very likely that 2010 will be the hotest year on record:

" * The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.1°F), which is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). The previous record for June was set in 2005.
* June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.
* The June worldwide averaged land surface temperature was 1.07°C (1.93°F) above the 20th century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F)—the warmest on record.
* It was the warmest April–June (three-month period) on record for the global land and ocean temperature and the land-only temperature. The three-month period was the second warmest for the world's oceans, behind 1998.
* It was the warmest June and April–June on record for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.
* It was the warmest January–June on record for the global land and ocean temperature. The worldwide land on average had its second warmest January–June, behind 2007. The worldwide averaged ocean temperature was the second warmest January–June, behind 1998.
* Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean continued to decrease during June 2010. According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, La Niña conditions are likely to develop during the Northern Hemisphere summer 2010."

Link here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=6&submitted=Get+Report

Fergus Pickering

I was in a bokshop and saw a volume (quite a good one it turned out) called 'Global Warming and Other Bollocks'. I read out the title to the bookshop owner and laughed - the way you do. And came, from a bearded chap nearby a DIATRIBE. I think London was going imminently to be under ten feet of water and that was the least of it. He finally calmed down and stumped off muttering. I shrugged, the bookshop owner winked, I bought the book. I don't know what this proves, but it proves something. I think the something is that we are not talking science here, we are talking religion.

Brian O'Connor

Steve McIntyre is, to my way of thinking, a true hero for his unrelenting yet gentlemanly assault on the "evidence" which AGW alarmists claim "proves" first that GW is happening, and second, that humans cause it.

McIntyre is agnostic . . . he doesn't claim that GW isn't happening, or that, if it is, humans are responsible for it, and therein lies the power of his work.

He merely dismantles the case presented by (A)GW supporters for both. (Though not a scientist himself, McIntyre understands the scientific method and the statistical techniques far better than the AGW authors themselves. And he has the patience of a saint.)

If you want a terrific whodunnit read, one that documents brilliantly and clearly the ins and outs of the GW debate and McIntyre's role in it, and is nevertheless intelligible to non-scientists, I can't recommend too highly A.W. Montford's book: The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science. http://tinyurl.com/324r4ec

(McIntyre's website Climate Audit is well worth visiting. http://climateaudit.org/)

Eve

I am surprised that a woman of Melanie's intelligence does not accept conclusions of a majority of scientists, including those with no ax to grind, about the existence of human-caused global climate change some of whose effects are already being felt and documented around the world. Do we know how serious the effects of climate change will be? No. Can we be pretty darn sure that climate change is occuring and will have serious effects and action must be taken now. Yes. Eve

Derek Pasquill

Coruuption at the heart of the scientific community equals a corruption of mind which inevitably poisons everything it touches.

Science gone bad, religion gone bad, communities gone bad -

even, and this is the real shocker -

Politics gone bad!

david elder

Peter McCloskey: does the final part of your quote mean that you expect La Nina to raise global temperatures? It actually lowers them. It is El Nino that warms the globe. Warm global temperatures in previous months are connected with an El Nino, now breaking up. Roy Spencer's satellite data from UAH shows a temperature fall of late. What does your quoted information do to dispel the argument that the Medieval Warm Period was as least as warm as today, and quite possibly warmer, as reflected by Viking farms in Greenland?

orkneylad

The graphs produced from ice core research seem to show if anything, that C02 rises lag behind temperature rises not the other way round.

This lag apears to be in the region of 800 years, which would suggest a 'trigger' circa 1200AD.

Eve

A follow-up to my last comment -
a link to an article by a Canadian conservative - expressing the view that the evidence for global warming is strong - not only liberals believe that climate change is happening and number of sceptical climate scientists is
very small.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/15/bad-science-global-warming-deniers-are-a-liability-to-the-conservative-cause/

Terry in Oz

The whole climate change scam is a grab for power by the left, and for personal wealth by elitist left wingers. The snakeoil salesman al gore will make billions if an ETS is introduced. The corrupt and racist un will dismantle western capitalism and democracy in the name of AGW if given the opportunity. These people are evil. Everything we believe in, our whole lifestyle, and (most importantly) our very freedom is at risk if they succeed. No wonder they have moved mountains to cover up Climategate. And quite brazenly.

Western governments should be charging such people with treason, for it is nothing less. If they win, kiss goodbye to civilisation forever. 1984 will look like a tea party compared to the people who will suffer and die if the mad climate alarmists get any hold on power. And we know from the draft treaty at Copenfrauden, that is exactly what the new fascism has planned. Insist that your government holds these traitors to account. Opposing them is not enough, exposing them and charging them is. Any government that doesn't do so isn't representing its voters and citizens and should be ejected from office.

Fabio P.Barbieri

I said it before and I'll say it again: this is the worst scandal in the entire history of science. In view of the gross failure of universities and ministries to punish the guilty, is there no way to take the bastards to court? Ordinary criminal court? There can be no doubt now that this is a conspiracy and a fraud, and that, whether or not the original reasons were to make money, enormous amounts of money have in fact been raised to keep up this pursuit of a will'o'the-wisp. Could not, if nothing else works, someone who has been gypped by Penn State or EAU into giving good money for this crap take them to court as fraudsters and forgers? For that is what they are.

Derek BLADES

I like Melanie's picture of the chap wearing a polar bear suit but it distracts attention from the only issue of any interest. Is the globe on which we live, and the only place we can call home, getting hotter? And may it become unbearably so in the lifetimes of our children or grandchildren?

I understand that Melanie has no offspring and perhaps that allows her to take a more robust attitude towards global warming. The unavoidable, and inconvenient, truth is that planet earth is getting warmer, and it is as close as we can get to a certainty that we are to blame for it. Could Melanie give us her views on how people of sound conservative principles might behave to stop this warming process? Or do we leave that problem to the infinite wisdom of a Christian or Judaic Creator?

gareth

great work Mel - perfectly summed up.

EC

Fergus vs Fungus - Priceless!

The AGW mongers have hijacked the environment movement which used to be about tackling largely sensible and practical issues and NOT CO2, dodgy tree ring data from some Turnip Academy in East Anglia and dubious temperature readings from weather stations re-sited to urban locations.

Augustus

Derek BLADES - Of course, you are a devoted disciple of Global Warming. The warming of Earth during the last century is, without any doubt, man-made!
And Melanie is, of course, being presumptuous to think otherwise. But isn't it also presumptuous to assume so certainly that global climate change is not part of a long-term planetary cycle, and that even the sun, and the oceans do not play a major role? Is it not the case that you, and all the other 'true believers' of AGW (if that is what you truly are) are simply devoted to a cause? A cause to save the planet from a global warming holocaust in the next century brought on by the release of CO2 emissions caused only by the
reckless consumption of man? In other words, a typical Socialist cause. You might as well say: 'If you want a viable and livable future then listen only to us'.

Fergus Pickering

EC, I have perfectly good fungus of my own. It lulls the buggers into a false sense of security. Eve, the phrase 'the majority of scientists' carries no more weight than 'the majority of Catholic priests' or 'the majority of first class cricketers'. No scientist's opinion is worth a damn unless he/she is talkimng about something within his/her field of expertise. And even then a majority counts for nothing. In science you are right or you are wrong. And you are right even if 'the majority' of scientists disagree with you as they invariably do if you come up with something new and important. I wouldn't know, not being a scientist. WhaI do know is the scientists at East Anglia are cheats and liars. Oh, I forgot, a government committee said they weren't. Ah well, that settles it, doesn't it.

Richard

There's this, from The New Scientist last September, arguing that the 'hockey stick' diagram is by no means discredited, and that the recent cooling showing up in some forms of measurement is not incompatible with the underlying warming trend showing in others.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646

I've always understood the New Scientist to be a reputable magazine that takes seriously its responsibility to report a wide range of scientific opinion. As a non-scientist I have to take that largely on trust - so, I'd be interested in Melanie's answers, or anyone else's, to the specific arguments made there.

On the email inquiry, I can understand Melanie's indignation - a bit. There does seem to have been a culture of secrecy and defensiveness that led to deliberate attempts to frustrate FOI requests and manipulate the peer-review process for journal articles - though I don't think there is evidence that the latter manipulation actually took place. And the inquiry does seem to have treated that rather indulgently. I do wonder whether anyone here is prepared to ask, sympathetically, what made those scientists so defensive. If your expertise gives you reason to think that a terrible danger is looming that can only be averted by rapid action, and no one seems to be responding to your warnings, you are in an extremely pressurised position. But there's no getting away from it: there seems to have been very bad and unfair practice, and it may be a tragedy that it brought the science into some disrepute at such a crucial moment.

What is not warranted at all, as far as I can see, is the assumption that these bad practices discredit the science itself - the evidence for man-made global warming. The frustration of FOI requests and the attempt to manipulate peer review don't change the basic evidence. That evidence can be contested, but it has to be contested scientifically, as evidence.

Melanie notes that some people convinced that global warming is man-made and dangerous were outraged by the emails. You don't have to be a sceptic to be critical of what those scientists were doing. Fred Pearce demonstrates that. I hope Melanie and others here agree with the description of his response as 'impressively even-handed'. Could we see a bit more of that even-handedness in these columns? In many ways, it is those who fear global warming who have greatest reason to be angry about what those emails revealed.

I am a non-expert watching this debate with concern. If I begin to see experts in the relevant fields changing their minds because of these emails, and non-partisan comentators arguing that the scientific evidence has changed, I will take note. And of course I will be very relieved.

I am not seeing this yet, though.

Curlew

Mankind has to have a religion of some sort; something to make possible a warm consciousness of being holier than others - and of course something to brainwash the young generation with. Since Christianity has been kicked out of the public sphere (as far as was possible, bien entendu - it's not going to go away any time soon) Environmentalism, of which AGW is the first and greatest commandment, has smoothly filled the vacancy. Once you grasp that, all the insane excesses drop into place.

John Holland

You are right, Fergus, to say that the number of scientists who support a theory is irrelevant if the idea is wrong.
What you, or any sceptics I have ever read, have ever managed to explain, is on what logical, as opposed to personal, grounds you choose to believe one group of scientists over another, much larger, group of scientists.
Your position is one of faith. I am sure it's not one of profound scientific knowledge.There clearly is absolutely no rational justification for the claim by most posters here that their opponents are blind religeous bigots, while they are rationalists. Saying it very loudly and angrily doesn't equate to a convincing argument, though I'm sure it feels good.

Augustus

Peter McCloskey - So we've had a pretty hot summer (so far), so what? 1976 was even hotter, when not even one drop of rain fell in the UK between the end of March and the beginning of September. And they say the medieval warm period was pretty hot too, what with all those bugs in the thatch and all. But last winter was pretty cold too,
ice and snow - remember? All this doesn't prove a thing. The fact is that, no matter what the weather, there's bound to be a model of Global Warming which offers a watertight explanation. I seem to recall that there was once upon a time a scientific consensus that the world was flat. A perfect example of pseudo-science is that whether ice caps melt, or expand, whether global temperatures rise or fall, whether seas rise, or do not rise - whatever happens, global warming theorists always claim it confirms their AGW theory.

Richard

And here's an interesting passage from the Penn State report to which Melanie links us above:

'Most questions about Dr. Mann's findings have been focused on his early published work that showed the "hockey stick" pattern of climate change. In fact, research published since then by Dr. Mann and by independent researchers has shown patterns similar to those first described by Dr. Mann, although Dr. Mann's more recent work has shown slightly less dramatic changes than those reported originally. In some cases, other researchers (e.g., Wahl & Ammann, 2007) have been able to replicate Dr. Mann's findings, using the publicly
available data and algorithms. The convergence of findings by different teams of researchers, using different data sets, lends further credence to the fact that Dr. Mann's
conduct of his research has followed acceptable practice within his field.'

Are Melanie and the sceptics here saying this isn't true?

Frank P

Derek Blades

"I understand Melanie has no offspring ..."

Really. Her children, then, will no doubt understand that you an ignorant twat.

I think we can judge the rest of your 'understanding' by the yardstick of that presumptuous and rather stupid error.

Dixon

"Fergus Pickering
July 17th, 2010 4:36am
I was in a bokshop and saw a volume (quite a good one it turned out) called 'Global Warming and Other Bollocks'. I read out the title to the bookshop owner and laughed - the way you do. And came, from a bearded chap nearby a DIATRIBE. I think London was going imminently to be under ten feet of water and that was the least of it. He finally calmed down and stumped off muttering. I shrugged, the bookshop owner winked, I bought the book. I don't know what this proves, but it proves something. I think the something is that we are not talking science here, we are talking religion."

IT PROVES that its a canny bookseller who encourages beardie nutters to hang around to incline people to buy the anti-beardie nutcase literature!

Dixon

Fergus Pickering, did you ask the bearded hysteric if his name was Derek?

C.Gee

Richard:

I direct your attention to: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

Wahl and Amman replicate more than the hockey stick. They replicate the same penchant for fudge that Mann displays.

The, ahem, investigations into the practices of warmists - in Britain and America - are part of the echo chamber of AGW activist-scientists. They simply ignore refutations and counter-arguments.

So, yes, it is probably true that " Dr. Mann's
conduct of his research has followed acceptable practice within his field." But you have to first redefine acceptable practice, change the nature of the field and narrow it to a small group of like-minded, but not very statistically competent,
alarmists.

But what a mealy-mouthed, careful, indirect exoneration of Mann that is. Just enough to keep the grants coming.

Simon Stephenson

John Holland : July 17th, 8.02pm

"What you, or any sceptics I have ever read, have [n]ever managed to explain, is on what logical, as opposed to personal, grounds you choose to believe one group of scientists over another, much larger, group of scientists."

Well the logical grounds upon which I am skeptical of the "much larger" group of scientists is that I believe they have allowed their in-built paternalism to compromise their commitment to scientific rigour. We skeptics are being asked to accept that the hoi polloi is unable to deal rationally with the "truth" that unrestrained economic growth will be destuctive to the human race, and that therefore, for his own good, Joe Bloggs must be unremittingly "nudged" in the "right" direction by being bombarded with a fabricated warning that grossly exaggerates the proven dangers and consequences of a failure to reform.

Let's have a proper political debate about future economic growth, and its consequences, with the AGW argument being given the level of prominence it actually merits. What is most likely to be destructive to the human race is the idea that the masses need to be herded in the right direction because its impossible to lead them to it.

DougS

An excellent post Melanie.

"...the roles of CRU scientists and others could not be distinguished from those of colleagues. There was 'team responsibility'." Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the university which houses CRU, calls this "exoneration".

I wonder how far I'd get in court if I attempted to use that sort of 'logic'?

'Your Honour, I know that I was caught speeding but so were lots of others, therefore, I'm innocent' - Not very far I think!

Augustus

Frank P., 18/7, 12.38am -

Seconded! But will there be an apology from that human cactus Blades? Not likely!

Dixon

Re DougS and Eve on the matter of, er "consensus":

"Eve
July 17th, 2010 10:02am
I am surprised that a woman of Melanie's intelligence does not accept conclusions of a majority of scientists, including those with no ax to grind, about the existence of human-caused global climate change some of whose effects are already being felt and documented around the world. Do we know how serious the effects of climate change will be? No. Can we be pretty darn sure that climate change is occuring and will have serious effects and action must be taken now. Yes. Eve"

Was there a pretty damn watertight scientific consensus that bacteria caused no harm and that Semmelweis was a looney? Yes.
Was bacteria harmless? No.
Was Semmelweis a nutter? YES...thats what consebnsus had it... they put him in a nuthouse anyway...where he died of septicaemia caused by harmless bacteria.
Is this graphic illustration of the stupidity of adducing "consensus" an isolated case? No.
Are there many others? Yes.
Does Eve know anything about science or the history of science? No!
Should Eve not keep her counsel on a topic she obviously knows nothing about? YES!

Frank P

James Lewis has contrived a little masterpiece on the subject of this thread over on American Thinker:

http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/635900.html

Do not miss it! It will globally warm the cockles of your hearts.

Augustus

These people are nothing but money grabbers and fraudsters. How else do you explain: "...we need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn't make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven't spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious."

And: "Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today - try and change the received date! Don't give those
skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

Well, I suppose the only consolation to be had regarding the whole scandal is that the data they were so keen to manipulate was basically garbage anyway.

Charles

Here's a couple of links to evidence released in the last few days. Both are consistent with what the models predict. The first covers measurements of temperature; the second deals with recorded ice loss in the Himalayas.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10660130

@Brian O'Connor: Steve MacIntyre is reported as noting that were he running government, he would take action on climate change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jul/15/climategate-public-debate

Wil

The American government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia's climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last November's leak of hundreds of stolen emails.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the unit's main sources of funding for its work assembling a database of global temperatures.

It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.

This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the unit's work.

Raymond in DC

2010 "hottest summer on record"? Given the declining number of temperature monitors around the world over recent decades and the pitiful few found even in the vast expanses of Russia, China and Canada, how can one be so certain?

Moreover, the fact that only six months ago we were said to have experienced one of the "coldest winters on record" should give one pause before jumping to conclusions.

Dixon

All these dweebs and their net data dont seem capable of the basic distinction between evidence of occurrence and evidence of causation.

To put it simply, if someone finds a corpse no amount of evidence that the body is indeed dead will ever prove that the chosen suspect is responsible. Doh!

As for predictions, the occurrence of events consistent with them only proves the basis of the prediction when the same theory allows for alterntive events tghat would invalidate the prediction. Which AGW patently does not, as ANY event will conform to some aspect of its predictions. That is why it is circular. That is why it is not science.

Dixon

Frank P...Crikey mate, that article is the uttermost pants. I know we and he agree, but his attempts to put accross an "argument" amount to going "nee, nee, ne, ne, neeeee".
He thinks British newspapers are still made at Fleet Street for hells bells, and that the EU was founded fourteen years ago. And try repeating his view that no real people ever died of VCJD to the relatives of those who have.

Sometimes when someone speaks up for ones own team one just wishes they would shut up instead. That article is a veritable "I'll get me coat" moment! How the hell did he dupe you into citing him mate?

Dixon

Wil...if I predict correctly that the "peer review" exonerates them and the funding restarts, does that prove that AGW is un-scientific? For thats the same logic deployed by our AGW proponents.

Dixon

Raymond in DC...you seem to have missed the critical news earlier this year that "climate years" will from this year onward only be based upon the temperatures between May and October. No, not a joke and I dint make it up. Its now officially the policy among climate "scientists".

Charles

Quote: <>

If the ice were still there, and the average global temperature were declining, then the models would be proved wrong, as would the prediction.

The point is that the evidence doesn't disprove the hypothesis that the world is rapidly getting warmer. It's the speed of change that makes it difficult to handle, not the fact of it. As plenty have pointed out here, the climate naturally changes all the time. But historically, it has changed sufficiently slowly for the people on the planet to adapt.

Proponents of AGW argue that human beings can and do influence the rapid warming process that we are now seeing, and that they are therefore in a position to do something about it. The question is what, if anything, should we do about it?

Sceptics such as Steve MacIntyre and Bjorn Lomborg accept that climate change is something that needs a political (with a small "p") response: Are they wrong?

Richard

C.Gee - Thank you for that link. Insofar as I understand the technicalities, Bishop Hill - mainly summarising McIntyre, I think - does seem to raise powerful doubts about the methods of statistical checking used in that particular study. What isn't so clear to me is how much these criticisms, assuming they are valid, affect the larger implications. Some of the contributors to the thread below the article ask the same question. Bishop Hill seems to be saying that Wahl and Ammon's graph falls short of some of the thresholds of reliability that are normally used - in one instance only slightly short. Does this, if true, invalidate the graph completely, or only relegate it somewhat as a piece of evidence? And is this kind of evidence, for all its flaws and uncertainties, the best evidence we currently have? That's the limitation of this sort of critique, necessary though it is. One would need to see alternative graphs, and have an account of their statistical methods, to get much further.

My impression is that a fair statement would be that there are numerous proxy indicators supporting the general warming thesis. All of them are to some degree open to question, but together they constitute strong evidence - one would have to make a worst-case assumption about the reliability of all of them to dismiss the case. And I see no reason to doubt the figures in the link Eve gives above - figures given by a conservative commentator - about the weight of scientific opinion. The sceptics are a tiny number.
As people here eagerly point out, a large expert consensus isn't necessarily right, but its existence is a pretty powerful piece of evidence: it represents masses of research by people in different fields, using different techniques. To dismiss that is irresponsible.

Perhaps new evidence that emerges will support the doubters, and the consensus will change. I hope so. I don't want my children to face this danger. We'll see. I can't see any sign of that shift at the moment.

Incidentally, I hope people who routinely accuse The Guardian of neglecting the sceptical case will note that it was this newspaper that invited McIntyre to London to debate the issue last week. And, yes, he did say that if he were in power he would want action on climate change. On his blog, too, he dissociates himself vehemently from attempts by the Republican Attorney General in Virginia to harrass Michael Mann further. The politics of this is murky on all sides.

Some people here sound as if they would prefer it if universities didn't attempt to study climate probabilities at all.

Simon Stephenson

Charles : July 19th, 8.17am

Climate change, the furore, needs a political response by virtue of the emotions it has raised, and of the fact that a large number of human beings has formed the point of view that it is a danger to the future of the race. The political response must be to the level of concern, and not to a presupposed state of affairs the very existence of which is disputed by a similarly large number of human beings.

I'm sorry if this is unsatisfactory to those who've put a lot of effort into trying to establish AGW, and the need to counter it, as unquestionable truths. Making a lot of noise certainly influences that section of the population whose opinions are based more on conformity than on free-thought, but in terms of establishing truth it's not worth a row of beans.

Cards on the table time, I think.

What is the real motivation behind the warmists desire to reduce carbon emissions? Is it all about climate? Is climate concern even that important, or is it just a device to achieve a goal that is emotively more difficult to establish?

And what about the skeptics? Are you all fully declaring your interests in rejecting the warmists recommendations? Where's the real balance of likelihood of the AGW argument pointing? How much of the skepticism is guileful obstructionism and how many is serious intellectual criticism of the quality of the case put forward?

Charlie

McIntyre is either a mining engineer with a good knowledge of statistics or a statistician with mining experience.
Climate temperature records using thermometers only go back to the 1850s. There is considerable evidence on urban development causing localised rises in temperature. In particular the change from a rural setting to one with extensive concrete, tarmac and heat from buildings can cause localised temperature rises.

The Wegman Report ( written by statisticians) points out the lack of statistical expertise amongst palaeoclimate scientists compared to medical and pharmceutical scientists.

The medieval warm period appears to have occurred in several parts of the world. What is true is that weather and climate is variable. In the 18 and 19 C villages were destroyed by advancing glaciers .

The problem is that humans have problems recording changes over about 85 years which is the lifespan of most people. Once there are changes occurring more than 150 years ago then quantitative records are very poor. Industrialisation forced quantitative record keeping to greatly improve in a similar way to the development of banking in late 14C Northern Italy created the need for improved mathematical skills.

If people wish to understand the importance and complexity of statistics in the palaeoclimate debate suggest they read the Wegman Report - E Wegman, D Scott and Y Said and the answers given By Wegman to Honourable B Stupak.

Climate varies and we need to know how the variation will impact humans. Carbon dioxide has an influence on temperature but the exact impact on the World's climate is unclear. Humans are increasing carbon dioxide in the atmopshere but the exact impact on climate is uncertain. Increasing temperature may not be disasterous if it causes increased rainfall and growth by plants and phytoplankton.

NR

Let's say AGW is happening. Why's that a bad thing? This is the big suspicion I have: everyone who is beating the drum for AGW over-reach into disaster scenarios which beg the question for State control. Why not look at it more positively: more food, better weather. Let's face it most of the countries predicted to bear the brunt of the ecopalypse are disastrous places to live anyway. I suspect the ends justifies the means for these activists and some scientists have been led astray.

Augustus

Anyone who has actually spoken to a climatologist today discovers just how many questions remain open, but the media, politicians, and even scientists, talk about changes to the weather with a certainty that does in fact not exist. One thing that the AGW scientists have had to learn the hard way is that, if you want to make the big league, you have got to survive the scrutiny and quality tests. If you fail, you will be crucified in public. All these jet-setting arrogant know-it-alls are now going to face a real test.

And another thing, one of the indisputable facts in the field of global climate change is that the atmospheric build-up of methane (CH4) has been declining more slowly over the past few decades than all the predictions. Since methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas (thought to have about 25 times the warming power of CO2)
emissions scenarios which fail to track methane will stuggle to replicate the total climate,
erring inevitable in their global warming forecasts.

John.

Eve, Climate has changed since the world began - if it stopped changing there certainly would be something surprising occuring! Whether it gets hotter or colder has nothing whatsoever to do with the tiny amount of CO2 contributed to the atmosphere by humans to the also tiny amount of CO2 already existent. Millions of years ago there were 12 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere and the Earth was an ice ball! CO2 only increases AFTER a rise in temperature. The correlation between changes in the ratio between the amount of magnetic radiation reaching the Earth from the sun and the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth fron outside the solar system is exact and far and away the most important factor to be considered. How much can we control this correlation? Not at all of course. I may add that the Romans had vineyards as far north as York and Greenland was called Greenland because when the Icelanders first went there it was green. These far warmer periods than our present one occured when there was far less CO2 in the atmosphere than now. Climate obviously changes all the time but it has absolutely nothing to do with the puny effects of human beings living on the globe!

John.

Eve, Sorry I forgot to say that the ratio I mention correlates exactly with changes in climate/temperture!

Dr Peter

Melanie, you more than most should know that UK is really WORLD CLASS at whitewash inquiries.

andrew adams

John,

I may add that the Romans had vineyards as far north as York

There are vineyards as far north as York now.

Eve, Sorry I forgot to say that the ratio I mention correlates exactly with changes in climate/temperture!

Do you have some evidence for that?

Gixxerboy

Peter McCloskey - if you're going to rely on published temperature records (NOAA or otherwise) you might as well try paying your bills with Reichsmarks. The record has become so utterly debased it is next to useless. The siting of many modern data stations would be funny were the consequences not so serious. Huge numbers are now affected by Urban Heat Island effects - and not just the catastrophically stupid sitings in jet wakes at airports. Then there's the fact that temperatures across the Arctic are 'guessed at' from readings of about a dozen thermometers around its edges. Perhaps most telling of all are the well documented transcription errors that meant 'minus' readings were recorded as 'plus' but the AGW activist element ensured the record stands uncorrected.

Last NH winter was one of the warmest on record, apparently, but across North America, Europe, Eurasia and East Asia all you could see all winter long was snow and ice. Perhaps our eyes were deceiving us, however, as climate 'scientists' told us some years ago that snowfall was a thing of the past.

andrew adams

The record has become so utterly debased it is next to useless.

Evidence?

John.

andrew adams: for evidence look up references in: "Scared to Death" by Christopher Booker, "An Appeal to Reason" by Lord Lawson, "the Chilling Stars" by Nigel Calder, "The World Upside Down" by Melanie Phillips and Plimer's book.

DougS

Dixon
July 18th, 2010 2:09pm

"Re DougS and Eve on the matter of, er "consensus":"

Eh? What have I said about 'consensus' - every time I read it or hear it I immediately think about Michael Crichton's comment, viz.

'Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because youâ™re being had.

John A. Davison

Try telling the Russians that global warming is a hoax. They are experiencing the hottest summer in their history with hundreds drowning as they try to escape the heat.

Furthermore, climate change has seriously altered Russian agriculture, leading to massive crop failures.

andrew adams

for evidence look up references in: "Scared to Death" by Christopher Booker, "An Appeal to Reason" by Lord Lawson, "the Chilling Stars" by Nigel Calder, "The World Upside Down" by Melanie Phillips and Plimer's book.

Those are credible sources? Any actual published scientific papers?

John.

andrew adams: the references to which I refer are published scientific papers, (in spite of the universal near impossibility of getting any anti-AGW research published). Please look up, read and see for yourself.

John.

John A. Davidson: What are you trying to indicate? Whether it gets colder or warmer why the surprise? Change is inevitable and certainly, in this case, has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that humans can do anything about. The amount of CO2in the atmosphere is negligible to begin with and the proportion of that negligible amount contributed by us - about 2 - 3% of the total - is even more derisory. Change has occured since the world began and will continue to occur. To imagine that humans can influence the complex causes of climate change - which have nothing to do with anything we could possibly influence - is absurd.

St Bruno

I don’t ‘do’ the climate change thingy. I tend to regard it as one of the new forms of Earth, Fire & Water alchemy transformation using base science to create gold. That said I would just like to share the following link: http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/Abbot_Marohasy_FOIA_DavidHolland_a.pdf

What I fail to grasp is the need to hide and doctor primary sources of data from the scientific world. Surely debate is a fundamental part of discovering the true interpretation of the gathered research data. Am I wrong? Maybe the object of the climate change by man was really the birth of another sun god worship religion where we mortals must sacrifice each other to appease the angry gods. Or maybe just a good old scam to make lots and lots of treasure for me and my other priests of global warming.

John.

andrew adams: the scientific evidence for an exact correlation between the ratio between the amount of magnetic and of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth and changes in global temperature and climate is contained in an entire book written on the subject: "The Chilling Stars", by Nigel Calder. References throughout the book are to scientific papers which you can look up with ease.

a.n.ditchfield

POST POST-NORMAL-SCIENCE?
a.n.ditchfield
______________________________________________________________________________
Post-Normal-Science claims to be the key to understanding complexity. It is invoked to support the need for a new world order with a different concept of progress.
What is progress? To most minds it is the increasingly efficient use of energy and materials, capital and labour, that translates into lower costs, better income for all and ultimately to more means for proper care of the environment.
Not all agree. The bitterness of Green extremists that swept with gale strength at the Copenhagen 2009 conference on climate pointed to the opposite direction: to limiting world economic activity even casting away the fruits of two centuries of the Industrial Revolution that they blame for a global warming that will render the planet uninhabitable. This is a controversial meaning of progress.
Such scare-mongering is too puny to be compared to the 20th century menaces of Fascism and Communism. Although Green extremists have done some damage, it is still trifling when compared to the destruction brought about by two world wars and the waste of a long cold war.
Totalitarians had weapons for their mischief while Green extremists can only brandish words that suggest they would have already capsized the planet, were it not for the ballast of common sense possessed by ordinary folk. They promote public policies too disastrous to be tolerated if implemented. The political reality is that the West refuses to be rolled back to an idealised Green agrarian past. Forget China and India.
Again, the world is divided into two camps. One side of the climate issue is epitomised by MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, who sees global warming as a political and journalistic phenomenon, not a physical one. He expects future generations to look back in wonder at the turn of the century hysteria about climate. On the other side stands Jerome Ravetz, theorist of the fashionable Post-Normal-Science, who contributed to the uncritical acceptance of anthropogenic global warming as settled science. It is not.
Ravetz is no common-or-garden Leftist; he holds a Cambridge PhD degree in mathematics. Steeped in Marxism at the Philadelphia home of his Russian/Jewish parents, his US passport was withdrawn during the McCarthy era, although later restored. Disgusted, he adopted UK citizenship. A disgruntled Ravetz is the kind of articulate intellectual that Oxford likes to keep for a while to enliven debate, and certainly fits the role with his Post-Normal-Science. He admits that the scientific method cannot be surpassed in its realm of simple phenomena; he argues that there is another realm with different laws, to deal with complex matters, such as climate, in which the stakes are high and scientific certainties low. Enter the Precautionary Principle: if the cause is just and the science unsettled, uncertainties should not stand in the way of acts of government promoted by official propaganda. Enter the Ministry of Truth…
The truth is that we don’t know – and may never know – how much of global climate change comes by hand of man or by hand of nature, to what degree and when. We do know that hiding uncertainties for the sake of expediency is at best misleading and at worst fraud, when it abets self-serving politics.
The uncertainties of complexity are not new; they been around since the time of the philosophers of Ancient Greece. After them, Hegel and Marx believed they had the instruments to navigate on the uncharted waters of complexity in history, politics and economics. Others argue that questions concerning human nature will always remain in the domain of the intuition of statesmen, of the religious, of the mystics, poets and artists who have the feel, not the thought, to discern in matters beyond the reach of reason – and therefore of science. Their intuition cannot be generalised into a soulless ideological system.
With Post-Normal-Science, Marxists try to bring back, as serious, their Alice in Wonderland thought. Their tactics have changed. They now follow the book of Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s. As an exile in Moscow, Gramsci saw the brutal realities of Stalin’s regime and realised the futility of seizing power with revolution and holding onto power with armed force. It led to oppression, not liberty. It is so because Christian societies are entrenched behind a rampart of values upheld for two thousand years; a frontal assault on them is doomed to failure. Gramsci proposed an alternative approach: Marxism should spread in concentric circles until it grows into a consensus. First win over the opinion formers; then the university professors, the intellectuals they educate, the journalists, teachers, leaders of civic and religious organisations, political parties. Finally, with the leadership in the fold, the masses would follow. Marxism would rule with no compulsion, in the place of societies founded on religious values. Christianity is the main opponent of Marxism. Evolution, not revolution, is the way to the ideal classless society, in a long but sure process.
After Communist regimes collapsed into universal discredit Gramsci’s suave approach gained favour, and in now under way. This was perceived by Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, who collected clippings of amusing things written by post-modern (Marxist) thinkers about hard science, especially those who use abstruse mathematical terms to make their text incomprehensible, so as to pass as profound. He grew weary of nonsense written about physics, held by social “scientists” to be white, male and euro-centric. He came to the conclusion that there is no such thing called a social science, because anything goes. He submitted his opinion to experimental proof.
PROPOSITION
That a prestigious sociology journal would publish an essay full of absurd statements, provided it was:
• Well written and of scholarly appearance;
• Cloaked in the garb of incomprehensible physics;
• Attuned with prejudices of the editor.
Sokal’s essay announced his discovery of Quantum Gravity, the synthesis of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, on a superior plane that supersedes both. He suggests he had done it with the methods of social sciences, in a feat that did away with the outworn formal logic and systematic experiment, still in use and unduly so. The implications were so revolutionary that the essay had been rejected for publication in peer-reviewed journals of physics, and this was the reason for its publication in Social Text, known for a mind open to innovation.
The essay contains nonsense galore immediately perceptible as a joke by an engineering student. The essay favoured mathematics freed from the shackles of the rules of arithmetic and stood against the teaching of the outworn geometry of Euclid, a tool for oppression of the working class. There was anti-feminist prejudice in fluid mechanics. Truth is relative. Constants such as the number pi (3.1416), the speed of light and the constant of gravitation have values attributed by the social context in the current epoch but the values of such constants will change in a future context with a different social setting.
No absurdity was contrived by Sokal; all were extracted from what was stated by post-modern thinkers about hard science and he supports it with more than one hundred references to published articles.
PROOF
Sokal’s essay, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity was indeed published as submitted, with no comment, although Sokal repeatedly asked whether there were any questions to be clarified.
"Social Text" #46/47, pp. 217-252 (1996).
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM
In another journal, at the time of publication, Sokal explained what he had done at Social Text and regretted that a silent tide of irrationality threatened institutions of higher learning to dictate, from a blind and intolerant pulpit, what is right to do, say and think.
An inquiring mind shuns Gospel according to St. Marx. Critical reviewers at Social Text could have asked: if a future society decrees that pi = 4 would circles become squares and heavenly bodies cubes? None did.
With its pretence of a short cut in dealing with complexity, Post-Normal-Science amounts to sophistry of the kind lampooned by Sokal. Its previous failure was in economics and the new one in climate. It is a grab for power to ration use of energy and thus control the lives of every human being in the world. Its followers are not above deceit to exploit emotions of a guilt-ridden West.
A confident West had worked wonders. The contributions of France to mathematics are expressed in the work of Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, D’Alembert, Delambre, Fourier, Lagrange, Monge, Poisson, Laplace, Cauchy, Galois, Poincaré, Benoit Mandelbrot. Then came French Post-modernists with the thought of Lewis Carroll characters: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”. It leads to proficiency in: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision. A Post Post-Normal-Science is unneeded to dialectically supplant the Post-Normal-Science of Ravetz; a return to Science would do.
Sokal’s essay is available on Internet at: /www.sablesys.com/sokal.html>.

Glen Grady

The scientific establishment has had decades of practice hiding the plethora of problems with the unproven hypothesis of microbe-to-man evolution and the downright evidence against the evolution scam they have perpetrating againts society, it doesn't take much for them to transfer these same skills to climate change lies.

John Holland

Glen;
Evolution- a scam? I was just about to relpy to this, then I thought, really, what's the point? You are happy in your fluffy bubble of sophistry, and it's lunch time.
Maybe lunch is a scam, who knows. Scientists might claim it evolved from "luncheon", but they're Marxists or something.
It's all so confusing.

Richard

Never mind AGW and evolution. You're only scratching the surface. What about gravity? That's the real scam, and it's been going on for centuries. Anyone who dares question it has no chance of an Oxbridge professorship and lots of state funding. It's blatant discrimination.

Insilssmaps

Don't agree with the conspiracy therory of your local morons.
Someone likely screwed up inside orignal calculations
and repairing it right now.
I do decide on your vigor policy. Maybe if there were less
demand, we might look for alternative resources e. g. like when
the value per gallon strike $4. 00+ a couple summers previously and millions
started to use mass transit. Amazingly, the gallon fallen to $2. 50. Great tut, Rahul, looking onward to finding more. Now I'm off to utilise this tut available. I had precisely the same experience with one of my friends... we have been classmates in kindergarten however she changed school, and after seven many years we turned classmates just as before, but many of us only became aware this earlier... finding ourself in those photos are generally AWESOME in truth.
[url=http://hairremovalproductreviews.com/]click here[/url]
great site
USPS acquired a subsidized monopoly, but that they lost almost everything, because they don't listen. And they will ain't gonna begin immediately.
Politicians get taken upon junkets by junk mailers and so they then authorize these phones stuff a person's mailbox with stuff that goes immediately on the landfill. WHA?
They are FUBAR.
Orders from "on high" to "close anything possible. " Guy will get a bonus with regard to reducing company. SNAFU.
Need your viral video to receive decision reversed... Staples? best thing are going to be animate this, thanks this is certainly great! these pics are tooooooooooooooo,,, amazing, super selection, superb scenes, everybody need to caught in these..........
http://hairremovalproductreviews.com/