Thanks for posting this, SweeChildofMine. More evidence of denial- worse than denial- planetary sabotage. These people at Heartland must hate themselves and the world they live in.
Too much bad news for one morning. I'm going back to my book. :(
(But I do appreciate the post SCofM )
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Thanks for posting this, SweeChildofMine. More evidence of denial- worse than denial- planetary sabotage. These people at Heartland must hate themselves and the world they live in.
Too much bad news for one morning. I'm going back to my book. :(
(But I do appreciate the post SCofM )
Isnt that awful. They sleep at night with no concern with greedy hands resting on the lump of cash in their pockets. If I was on the Government Accountability Board MANY MANY heads would be rolling right now.
“Scientific Consensus” doesn’t work? Forge Something
You know, I don’t respond to a lot of the climate science news right now. Partly, I’ve been distracted by other things, but mostly it’s because I just don’t have anything new to say. Show 130 years of data that says the Sierra Nevada snowpack isn’t actually declining? Show that the supposed disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers in 2035 (based on a typo, as first reported here at PJM) isn’t happening?
Yeah, its kind of what I expect: the warming crisis “consensus”, always supported with questionable models and piss-poor statistics, is collapsing.
This time, however, we’ve got something new and different. Starting with the warmenista DeSmogBlog, the popular story this week has been that a Heartland Institute (insert Phantom of the Opera music, pictures of bats, and a reference to the Koch Brothers) “whistleblower” had revealed “Heartland Institute’s budget, fundraising plan, its Climate Strategy for 2012 and sundry other documents (all attached) that prove all of the worst allegations that have been levelled against the organization.”
The only problem? The closest to a “smoking gun” was forged.
Apparently, someone still smarting about Climategate decided if they didn’t have a counter-Climategate, they’d make one up.
Now, what’s interesting if you look at the first post is that about a half-dozen other warmenista blogs all posted about this at very nearly the same time. Interested observers will note that it took most of November 18th 2009 for the Climategate story to get even around the climate-skeptic blogs. (We at PJM were the first US source to break the story in a major-market blog, and would have been first in the world except we lost our nerve until the BBC had it too.)
It’s almost as if it were co-ordinated.
We’ve asked Heartland for an article on this for PJM. In the mean time, see Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That for all the details.
Update
megan McArdle at the Atlantic doesn’t buy it either. “Fake but Accurate” anyone?
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
"warmenista"... that's funny.
That vast majority of scientist, well trained, without political, religious or money motives are not "ista" anything. Don't forget to check out realclimate.org, I think you'll see what I mean... but you can't just skim if you want to learn.
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"Try to not spook the horse."
-Neil Young
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
Thanks for posting this, SweeChildofMine. More evidence of denial- worse than denial- planetary sabotage. These people at Heartland must hate themselves and the world they live in.
Too much bad news for one morning. I'm going back to my book. :(
(But I do appreciate the post SCofM )
Isnt that awful. They sleep at night with no concern with greedy hands resting on the lump of cash in their pockets. If I was on the Government Accountability Board MANY MANY heads would be rolling right now.
SweetChildofMIne, your post reminds me a this quote I read last night from Gertude Stein's book, Paris, France. I can picture her saying this here and/or elsewhere on AMT:
"And now it is once more an August and September and there is once more a crisis and once more the farmers and the gentle farmers talk about life as it is. One of the gentlest said to me the other day. We used to think not we but everybody used to think that it was kings who were ambitious who were greedy and who brought misery to the people who had no way to resist them. But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and they will all be the same.
He shook his head sadly and went back to his harvesting."
(Not to get too far off topic but I have to say Paris, France is an amazing book. Amazing and amazing and amazing.)
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
In any revolution what is the price of disillusionment upon its participants after some dishonest bastards has seized opportunity, taken it and has made things just as bad as before without any lasting changes, making the feeling of any effort futile?
My feeling about anyone in power once you have gained such status it is not yours to wield and misuse. Paradoxically it is the opposite, granting those power and priviledge to be shared and empowering the whole community for which "they" serve and administering the will of the people. The leader is the servant. To be the fairest judge only on what is the best decisions as the community as a whole.
ho-hum in an ideal world with ideal down to earth values this most likely could happen
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
We are in a tremendous state of sad affairs and have been for a very long time.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
We are in a tremendous state of sad affairs and have been for a very long time.
Nice quote. Imagine if we actually stuck to the Constitution.
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
The article I posted already stated they are denying it. And Microsoft stepped up to the plate saying it gave them free software only. Anyway.
I mean if I was acting stupid in my own self interest trying to save face, denial is usually the first thing that happens. Whatever, such things comes to its own terms and reaps the bitter fruit it has planted in the end. Let it go. People knowing and outrage says enough to them to stop. Maybe its just a warning on watching the integrity NGO's on greenwashing. Truth of the matter is anyone cant set up a group and make its self look authoritive and spew whatever the hell they want. Different variable in statistics give variable outcomes, skewing the numbers so to speak.
(anyone hate statistics in school? I did!)
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
"Actually, we’ve produced more sound research on climate change than all but a very small number of very elite government and university-based organizations."
This is nonsense. Climate scientists "small" "elite" group. Creating this illusion is obvious smoke screening.
"Actually, we’re trying to make the “teaching of global warming” much more rigorous by replacing propaganda and agenda-driven rhetoric with real science."
Wow! Excellent use of irony. All I can do is laugh. Propaganda and agenda driven rhetoric? So are they asserting that the vast majority of scientist who are convinced global warming is real and anthropogenic are not "real" scientists? :?
"Actually, we’re sharing the real opinions of real scientists on the causes, consequences, and likely future trajectory of climate change, and of economists and other policy experts on what should be done about it, if anything. "
More smoke screening. Read between the lines: "Doing anything about climate change will cost corporations money."
I could go on but look, Heartland Institute- were talking about the group that worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks. Do you really believe these people?
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming The authors of the Jan. 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed, 'No Need to Panic about Global Warming,' respond to their critics.
Editor's Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.
The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, "No Need to Panic about Global Warming," is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.)
We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.
In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.
These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year-to-year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer-term trends are significant.
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From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
The Trenberth letter tells us that "computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean." The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?
Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion. We have offered ours. With apologies for any immodesty, we all have enjoyed distinguished careers in climate science or in key science and engineering disciplines (such as physics, aeronautics, geology, biology, forecasting) on which climate science is based.
Trenberth et al. tell us that the managements of major national academies of science have said that "the science is clear, the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible." Apparently every generation of humanity needs to relearn that Mother Nature tells us what the science is, not authoritarian academy bureaucrats or computer models.
One reason to be on guard, as we explained in our original op-ed, is that motives other than objective science are at work in much of the scientific establishment. All of us are members of major academies and scientific societies, but we urge Journal readers not to depend on pompous academy pronouncements—on what we say—but to follow the motto of the Royal Society of Great Britain, one of the oldest learned societies in the world: nullius in verba—take nobody's word for it. As we said in our op-ed, everyone should look at certain stubborn facts that don't fit the theory espoused in the Trenberth letter, for example—the graph of surface temperature above, and similar data for the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the upper oceans.
What are we to make of the letter's claim: "Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record." We don't see any warming trend after the year 2000 in the graph. It is true that the years 2000-2010 were perhaps 0.2 C warmer than the preceding 10 years. But the record indicates that long before CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere began to increase, the earth began to warm in fits and starts at the end of the Little Ice Age—hundreds of years ago. This long term-trend is quite likely to produce several warm years in a row. The question is how much of the warming comes from CO2 and how much is due to other, both natural and anthropogenic, factors?
There have been many times in the past when there were warmer decades. It may have been warmer in medieval times, when the Vikings settled Greenland, and when wine was exported from England. Many proxy indicators show that the Medieval Warming was global in extent. And there were even warmer periods a few thousand years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum. The fact is that there are very powerful influences on the earth's climate that have nothing to do with human-generated CO2. The graph strongly suggests that the IPCC has greatly underestimated the natural sources of warming (and cooling) and has greatly exaggerated the warming from CO2.
The Trenberth letter states: "Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused." However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact.
But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming. To claim, as the Trenberth letter apparently does, that disputing this constitutes "extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert" is peculiar indeed.
One might infer from the Trenberth letter that scientific facts are determined by majority vote. Some postmodern philosophers have made such claims. But scientific facts come from observations, experiments and careful analysis, not from the near-unanimous vote of some group of people.
The continued efforts of the climate establishment to eliminate "extreme views" can acquire a seriously threatening nature when efforts are directed at silencing scientific opposition. In our op-ed we mentioned the campaign circa 2003 to have Dr. Chris de Freitas removed not only from his position as editor of the journal Climate Research, but from his university job as well. Much of that campaign is documented in Climategate emails, where one of the signatories of the Trenberth et al. letter writes: "I believe that a boycott against publishing, reviewing for, or even citing articles from Climate Research [then edited by Dr. de Freitas] is certainly warranted, but perhaps the minimum action that should be taken."
Or consider the resignation last year of Wolfgang Wagner, editor-in-chief of the journal Remote Sensing. In a fulsome resignation editorial eerily reminiscent of past recantations by political and religious heretics, Mr. Wagner confessed to his "sin" of publishing a properly peer-reviewed paper by University of Alabama scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell containing the finding that IPCC models exaggerate the warming caused by increasing CO2.
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The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.
The European experience with green technologies has also been discouraging. A study found that every new "green job" in Spain destroyed more than two existing jobs and diverted capital that would have created new jobs elsewhere in the economy. More recently, European governments have been cutting subsidies for expensive CO2-emissionless energy technologies, not what one would expect if such subsidies were stimulating otherwise languid economies. And as we pointed out in our op-ed, it is unlikely that there will be any environmental benefit from the reduced CO2 emissions associated with green technologies, which are based on the demonization of CO2.
Turning to the letter of the president of the American Physical Society (APS), Robert Byer, we read, "The statement [on climate] does not declare, as the signatories of the letter [our op-ed] suggest, that the human contribution to climate change is incontrovertible." This seems to suggest that APS does not in fact consider the science on this key question to be settled.
Yet here is the critical paragraph from the statement that caused the resignation of Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever and many other long-time members of the APS: "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." No reasonable person can read this and avoid the conclusion that APS is declaring the human impact "incontrovertible." Otherwise there would be no logical link from "global warming" to the shrill call for mitigation.
The APS response to the concerns of its membership was better than that of any other scientific society, but it was not democratic. The management of APS took months to review the statement quoted above, and it eventually declared that not a word needed to be changed, though some 750 words were added to try to explain what the original 157 words really meant. APS members were permitted to send in comments but the comments were never made public.
In spite of the obstinacy of some in APS management, APS members of good will are supporting the establishment of a politics-free, climate physics study group within the Society. If successful, it will facilitate much needed discussion, debate, and independent research in the physics of climate.
In summary, science progresses by testing predictions against real world data obtained from direct observations and rigorous experiments. The stakes in the global-warming debate are much too high to ignore this observational evidence and declare the science settled. Though there are many more scientists who are extremely well qualified and have reached the same conclusions we have, we stress again that science is not a democratic exercise and our conclusions must be based on observational evidence.
The computer-model predictions of alarming global warming have seriously exaggerated the warming by CO2 and have underestimated other causes. Since CO2 is not a pollutant but a substantial benefit to agriculture, and since its warming potential has been greatly exaggerated, it is time for the world to rethink its frenzied pursuit of decarbonization at any cost.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antoninio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
takes about 20 minutes to learn about global warming ... if you really want to know the truth - the best place to start is actually understanding what you are arguing against ...
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
takes about 20 minutes to learn about global warming ... if you really want to know the truth - the best place to start is actually understanding what you are arguing against ...
Yes, but only if one wants to.
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
polaris_x is right, you might be looking at a total upheaval in the way we live and all the big problems of being up against big businesses who contribute to global warming...
however when minimum guidelines are set the are at a bare minimum and rarely enforced,,,were not even completing the baby steps.... that also goes for asking for minimal lifestyle changes also which are not occurring.
. "The point here is, we need a rapid transition to renewable (energy), and avoid committing to long-term fossil fuel use if we are to get within the limits (of reducing global warming to less than 2 C)."
polaris_x is right, you might be looking at a total upheaval in the way we live and all the big problems of being up against big businesses who contribute to global warming...
however when minimum guidelines are set the are at a bare minimum and rarely enforced,,,were not even completing the baby steps.... that also goes for asking for minimal lifestyle changes also which are not occurring.
Sadly, this is true. I have a hard time convincing some people just to recycle- and recycling is the smallest of baby steps
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
Alright? Let go head to head. Stealing? Is it theft if you are doing "it" for the benefit for other people? Im stealing cough medicine for my sick baby because I have no money. Im stealing bread because I need to feed my family. Im stealing documents because i want to expose the truth about certain causes which may havea detriment on the effect the planet I live on? Robin Hood, I stole from the rich to feed the poor. What is then injustice when you are fighting the injustice or victim of the injustice?
Alright? Let go head to head. Stealing? Is it theft if you are doing "it" for the benefit for other people? Im stealing cough medicine for my sick baby because I have no money. Im stealing bread because I need to feed my family. Im stealing documents because i want to expose the truth about certain causes which may havea detriment on the effect the planet I live on? Robin Hood, I stole from the rich to feed the poor. What is then injustice when you are fighting the injustice or victim of the injustice?
I haven't been following along, but are you justifying stealing?
Sorry. The world doesn't work the way you tell it to.
"Humans seem to be capable of nearly any foolishness in a noble cause."
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
Climate modelling
Climate Science
Instrumental Record
IPCC
— group @ 24 February 2012
Guest commentary from Barry Bickmore (repost)
The Wall Street Journal posted yet another op-ed by 16 scientists and engineers, which even include a few climate scientists(!!!). Here is the editor’s note to explain the context.
Editor’s Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of“No Need to Panic About Global Warming,” an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.
A relative sent me the article, asking for my thoughts on it. Here’s what I said in response.
Hi [Name Removed],
I don’t have time to do a full reply, but I’ll take apart a few of their main points.
The WSJ authors’ main point is that if the data doesn’t conform to predictions, the theory is “falsified”. They claim to show that global mean temperature data hasn’t conformed to climate model predictions, and so the models are falsified.
But let’s look at the graph. They have a temperature plot, which wiggles all over the place, and then they have 4 straight lines that are supposed to represent the model predictions. The line for the IPCC First Assessment Report is clearly way off, but back in 1990 the climate models didn’t include important things like ocean circulation, so that’s hardly surprising. The lines for the next 3 IPCC reports are very similar to one another, though. What the authors don’t tell you is that the lines they plot are really just the average long-term slopes of a bunch of different models. The individual models actually predict that the temperature will go up and down for a few years at a time, but the long-term slope (30 years or more) will be about what those straight lines say. Given that these lines are supposed to be average, long-term slopes, take a look at the temperature data and try to estimate whether the overall slope of the data is similar to the slopes of those three lines (from the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC reports). If you were to calculate the slope of the data WITH error bars, the model predictions would very likely be in that range.
Comparison of the spread of actual IPCC projections (2007) with observations of annual mean temperatures
That brings up another point. All climate models include parameters that aren’t known precisely, so the model projections have to include that uncertainty to be meaningful. And yet, the WSJ authors don’t provide any error bars of any kind! The fact is that if they did so, you would clearly see that the global mean temperature has wiggled around inside those error bars, just like it was supposed to.
So before I go on, let me be blunt about these guys. They know about error bars. They know that it’s meaningless, in a “noisy” system like global climate, to compare projected long-term trends to just a few years of data. And yet, they did. Why? I’ll let you decide.
The WSJ authors say that, although something like 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that humans are causing “significant” global warming, there really is a lot of disagreement about how much humans contribute to the total. The 97% figure comes from a 2009 study by Doran and Zimmerman.
So they don’t like Doran and Zimmerman’s survey, and they would have liked more detailed questions. After all, D&Z asked respondents to say whether they thought humans were causing “significant” temperature change, and who’s to say what is “significant”? So is there no real consensus on the question of how much humans are contributing?
First, every single national/international scientific organization with expertise in this area and every single national academy of science, has issued a statement saying that humans are causing significant global warming, and we ought to do something about it. So they are saying that the human contribution is “significant” enough that we need to worry about it and can/should do something about it. This could not happen unless there was a VERY strong majority of experts. Here is a nice graphic to illustrate this point (H/T Adam Siegel).
But what if these statements are suppressing significant minority views–say 20%. We could do a literature survey and see what percentage of papers published question the consensus. Naomi Oreskes (a prominent science historian) did this in 2004 (see also her WaPo opinion column), surveying a random sample of 928 papers that showed up in a standard database with the search phrase “global climate change” during 1993-2003. Some of the papers didn’t really address the consensus, but many did explicitly or implicitly support it. She didn’t find a single one that went against the consensus. Now, obviously there were some contrarian papers published during that period, but I’ve done some of my own not-very-careful work on this question (using different search terms), and I estimate that during 1993-2003, less than 1% of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate change was contrarian.
Another study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 (Anderegg et al, 2010), looked at the consensus question from a different angle. I’ll let you read it if you want.
Once again, the WSJ authors (at least the few that actually study climate for a living) know very well that they are a tiny minority. So why don’t they just admit that and try to convince people on the basis of evidence, rather than lack of consensus? Well, if their evidence is on par with the graph they produced, maybe their time is well spent trying to cloud the consensus issue.
The WSJ authors further imply that the “scientific establishment” is out to quash any dissent. So even if almost all the papers about climate change go along with the consensus, maybe that’s because the Evil Empire is keeping out those droves of contrarian scientists that exist… somewhere.
The WSJ authors give a couple examples, both of which are ridiculous, but I have personal experience with the Remote Sensing article by Spencer and Braswell, so I’ll address that one. The fact is that Spencer and Braswell published a paper in which they made statistical claims about the difference between some data sets without actually calculating error bars, which is a big no-no, and if they had done the statistics, it would have shown that their conclusions could not be statistically supported. They also said they analyzed certain data, but then left some of it out of the Results that just happened to completely undercut their main claims. This is serious, serious stuff, and it’s no wonder Wolfgang Wagner resigned from his editorship–not because of political pressure, but because he didn’t want his fledgling journal to get a reputation for publishing any nonsense anybody sends in.[Ed. See this discussion]
The level of deception by the WSJ authors and others like them is absolutely astonishing to me.
Barry
PS. Here is a recent post at RealClimate that puts the nonsense about climate models being “falsified” in perspective. The fact is that they aren’t doing too badly, except that they severely UNDERestimate the Arctic sea ice melt rate.
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Alright? Let go head to head. Stealing? Is it theft if you are doing "it" for the benefit for other people? Im stealing cough medicine for my sick baby because I have no money. Im stealing bread because I need to feed my family. Im stealing documents because i want to expose the truth about certain causes which may havea detriment on the effect the planet I live on? Robin Hood, I stole from the rich to feed the poor. What is then injustice when you are fighting the injustice or victim of the injustice?
I haven't been following along, but are you justifying stealing?
What is stealing? Im justifying it in that case. A few papers telling the truth from a fraud BS organization fronting lies for big business causing detriment to the human race. Yes, Im justifying stealing. in this case.
Wall Street speculators purposely raising price on wheat and starving millions of people all over the globe to make money, no I am not justifying their stealing. But thats completely legal.
I assume neither one of your parents read you the bedtime fable of Robin Hood nor did you come to the morally just conclusion it gives its readers.
You know, I know, statistics and data can be skewed. Not only skewed then quotes from reports taken out of context for a double whammy. The problem is does the rest of the world know? or understand. Thats the thing its like constant debridement of a cankerous abscess called propaganda to get to the facts and or a culmination of information by research to figure out the truth.
The thing is people are too caught up in their own crap to take the time to do these things or could be less interested in doing a bit a research to figure things out. So they take what is said for fact from one source and then thats it.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,429
Alright? Let go head to head. Stealing? Is it theft if you are doing "it" for the benefit for other people? Im stealing cough medicine for my sick baby because I have no money. Im stealing bread because I need to feed my family. Im stealing documents because i want to expose the truth about certain causes which may havea detriment on the effect the planet I live on? Robin Hood, I stole from the rich to feed the poor. What is then injustice when you are fighting the injustice or victim of the injustice?
I haven't been following along, but are you justifying stealing?
What is stealing? Im justifying it in that case. A few papers telling the truth from a fraud BS organization fronting lies for big business causing detriment to the human race. Yes, Im justifying stealing. in this case.
Wall Street speculators purposely raising price on wheat and starving millions of people all over the globe to make money, no I am not justifying their stealing. But thats completely legal.
I assume neither one of your parents read you the bedtime fable of Robin Hood nor did you come to the morally just conclusion it gives its readers.
"Steal a little and they'll throw you in jail.
Steal a lot and they'll make you king."
--Bob Dylan
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
All climate models include parameters that aren’t known precisely, so the model projections have to include that uncertainty to be meaningful.
All climate models are imprecise because they are models. They are statistical models based on a theory. You can only hope to nail it down as close to the truth as you can get, but knowing you're there, won't ever happen. That's by definition - science. Trial and error.... Hypothesis testing.
It's possible that many of the causal models (saying there's a connection between man-made CO2 and temperature) are almost completely incorrect. They may point to significant correlation of CO2 when, in reality, it's simply due to something like an omitted variable bias. When you include that variable (that's currently not included) in a multivariate analysis the correlation may flip completely or become insignificant.
Since, I've been told to "educate" myself a number of times here (more like indoctrinate, in my opinion). I really suggest global warming supporters take four or five advanced statistical modeling classes, or just simply take 2 graduate econometrics courses. After, then we can actually talk about these models in an educated manner and get into specifics.
Until then, a lot of you are simply cutting and pasting your opinions from green blogs. That was one of the most important points in that wsj article. Those green blogs you keep citing are based, very potentially, on flawed models and are, of course, bias... and there are incentives for them to continue with the charade. No amount of your regurgitation of their information will change that.
Further, no amount of stats provided to you or to them will ever prove that AGW is at all refutable... unless you learn statistics yourself. Science always involves the scientific method, particularly when there's millions of elements/variables at play.
Comments
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12047/1210636-115.stm
article originally appeared in NYT
Too much bad news for one morning. I'm going back to my book. :(
(But I do appreciate the post SCofM
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Isnt that awful. They sleep at night with no concern with greedy hands resting on the lump of cash in their pockets. If I was on the Government Accountability Board MANY MANY heads would be rolling right now.
“Scientific Consensus” doesn’t work? Forge Something
You know, I don’t respond to a lot of the climate science news right now. Partly, I’ve been distracted by other things, but mostly it’s because I just don’t have anything new to say. Show 130 years of data that says the Sierra Nevada snowpack isn’t actually declining? Show that the supposed disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers in 2035 (based on a typo, as first reported here at PJM) isn’t happening?
Yeah, its kind of what I expect: the warming crisis “consensus”, always supported with questionable models and piss-poor statistics, is collapsing.
This time, however, we’ve got something new and different. Starting with the warmenista DeSmogBlog, the popular story this week has been that a Heartland Institute (insert Phantom of the Opera music, pictures of bats, and a reference to the Koch Brothers) “whistleblower” had revealed “Heartland Institute’s budget, fundraising plan, its Climate Strategy for 2012 and sundry other documents (all attached) that prove all of the worst allegations that have been levelled against the organization.”
The only problem? The closest to a “smoking gun” was forged.
Apparently, someone still smarting about Climategate decided if they didn’t have a counter-Climategate, they’d make one up.
Now, what’s interesting if you look at the first post is that about a half-dozen other warmenista blogs all posted about this at very nearly the same time. Interested observers will note that it took most of November 18th 2009 for the Climategate story to get even around the climate-skeptic blogs. (We at PJM were the first US source to break the story in a major-market blog, and would have been first in the world except we lost our nerve until the BBC had it too.)
It’s almost as if it were co-ordinated.
We’ve asked Heartland for an article on this for PJM. In the mean time, see Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That for all the details.
Update
megan McArdle at the Atlantic doesn’t buy it either. “Fake but Accurate” anyone?
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/02/16/sc ... something/
— Socrates
That vast majority of scientist, well trained, without political, religious or money motives are not "ista" anything. Don't forget to check out realclimate.org, I think you'll see what I mean... but you can't just skim if you want to learn.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"And now it is once more an August and September and there is once more a crisis and once more the farmers and the gentle farmers talk about life as it is. One of the gentlest said to me the other day. We used to think not we but everybody used to think that it was kings who were ambitious who were greedy and who brought misery to the people who had no way to resist them. But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and they will all be the same.
He shook his head sadly and went back to his harvesting."
(Not to get too far off topic but I have to say Paris, France is an amazing book. Amazing and amazing and amazing.)
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
My feeling about anyone in power once you have gained such status it is not yours to wield and misuse. Paradoxically it is the opposite, granting those power and priviledge to be shared and empowering the whole community for which "they" serve and administering the will of the people. The leader is the servant. To be the fairest judge only on what is the best decisions as the community as a whole.
ho-hum in an ideal world with ideal down to earth values this most likely could happen
We are in a tremendous state of sad affairs and have been for a very long time.
Nice quote. Imagine if we actually stuck to the Constitution.
— Socrates
heartland rebuttal
— Socrates
I mean if I was acting stupid in my own self interest trying to save face, denial is usually the first thing that happens. Whatever, such things comes to its own terms and reaps the bitter fruit it has planted in the end. Let it go. People knowing and outrage says enough to them to stop. Maybe its just a warning on watching the integrity NGO's on greenwashing. Truth of the matter is anyone cant set up a group and make its self look authoritive and spew whatever the hell they want. Different variable in statistics give variable outcomes, skewing the numbers so to speak.
(anyone hate statistics in school? I did!)
"Actually, we’ve produced more sound research on climate change than all but a very small number of very elite government and university-based organizations."
This is nonsense. Climate scientists "small" "elite" group. Creating this illusion is obvious smoke screening.
"Actually, we’re trying to make the “teaching of global warming” much more rigorous by replacing propaganda and agenda-driven rhetoric with real science."
Wow! Excellent use of irony. All I can do is laugh. Propaganda and agenda driven rhetoric? So are they asserting that the vast majority of scientist who are convinced global warming is real and anthropogenic are not "real" scientists? :?
"Actually, we’re sharing the real opinions of real scientists on the causes, consequences, and likely future trajectory of climate change, and of economists and other policy experts on what should be done about it, if anything. "
More smoke screening. Read between the lines: "Doing anything about climate change will cost corporations money."
I could go on but look, Heartland Institute- were talking about the group that worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks. Do you really believe these people?
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel_1
Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming
The authors of the Jan. 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed, 'No Need to Panic about Global Warming,' respond to their critics.
Editor's Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.
The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, "No Need to Panic about Global Warming," is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.)
We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.
In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.
These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year-to-year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer-term trends are significant.
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From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
The Trenberth letter tells us that "computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean." The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?
Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion. We have offered ours. With apologies for any immodesty, we all have enjoyed distinguished careers in climate science or in key science and engineering disciplines (such as physics, aeronautics, geology, biology, forecasting) on which climate science is based.
Trenberth et al. tell us that the managements of major national academies of science have said that "the science is clear, the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible." Apparently every generation of humanity needs to relearn that Mother Nature tells us what the science is, not authoritarian academy bureaucrats or computer models.
One reason to be on guard, as we explained in our original op-ed, is that motives other than objective science are at work in much of the scientific establishment. All of us are members of major academies and scientific societies, but we urge Journal readers not to depend on pompous academy pronouncements—on what we say—but to follow the motto of the Royal Society of Great Britain, one of the oldest learned societies in the world: nullius in verba—take nobody's word for it. As we said in our op-ed, everyone should look at certain stubborn facts that don't fit the theory espoused in the Trenberth letter, for example—the graph of surface temperature above, and similar data for the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the upper oceans.
What are we to make of the letter's claim: "Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record." We don't see any warming trend after the year 2000 in the graph. It is true that the years 2000-2010 were perhaps 0.2 C warmer than the preceding 10 years. But the record indicates that long before CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere began to increase, the earth began to warm in fits and starts at the end of the Little Ice Age—hundreds of years ago. This long term-trend is quite likely to produce several warm years in a row. The question is how much of the warming comes from CO2 and how much is due to other, both natural and anthropogenic, factors?
There have been many times in the past when there were warmer decades. It may have been warmer in medieval times, when the Vikings settled Greenland, and when wine was exported from England. Many proxy indicators show that the Medieval Warming was global in extent. And there were even warmer periods a few thousand years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum. The fact is that there are very powerful influences on the earth's climate that have nothing to do with human-generated CO2. The graph strongly suggests that the IPCC has greatly underestimated the natural sources of warming (and cooling) and has greatly exaggerated the warming from CO2.
The Trenberth letter states: "Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused." However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact.
But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming. To claim, as the Trenberth letter apparently does, that disputing this constitutes "extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert" is peculiar indeed.
One might infer from the Trenberth letter that scientific facts are determined by majority vote. Some postmodern philosophers have made such claims. But scientific facts come from observations, experiments and careful analysis, not from the near-unanimous vote of some group of people.
The continued efforts of the climate establishment to eliminate "extreme views" can acquire a seriously threatening nature when efforts are directed at silencing scientific opposition. In our op-ed we mentioned the campaign circa 2003 to have Dr. Chris de Freitas removed not only from his position as editor of the journal Climate Research, but from his university job as well. Much of that campaign is documented in Climategate emails, where one of the signatories of the Trenberth et al. letter writes: "I believe that a boycott against publishing, reviewing for, or even citing articles from Climate Research [then edited by Dr. de Freitas] is certainly warranted, but perhaps the minimum action that should be taken."
Or consider the resignation last year of Wolfgang Wagner, editor-in-chief of the journal Remote Sensing. In a fulsome resignation editorial eerily reminiscent of past recantations by political and religious heretics, Mr. Wagner confessed to his "sin" of publishing a properly peer-reviewed paper by University of Alabama scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell containing the finding that IPCC models exaggerate the warming caused by increasing CO2.
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The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.
The European experience with green technologies has also been discouraging. A study found that every new "green job" in Spain destroyed more than two existing jobs and diverted capital that would have created new jobs elsewhere in the economy. More recently, European governments have been cutting subsidies for expensive CO2-emissionless energy technologies, not what one would expect if such subsidies were stimulating otherwise languid economies. And as we pointed out in our op-ed, it is unlikely that there will be any environmental benefit from the reduced CO2 emissions associated with green technologies, which are based on the demonization of CO2.
Turning to the letter of the president of the American Physical Society (APS), Robert Byer, we read, "The statement [on climate] does not declare, as the signatories of the letter [our op-ed] suggest, that the human contribution to climate change is incontrovertible." This seems to suggest that APS does not in fact consider the science on this key question to be settled.
Yet here is the critical paragraph from the statement that caused the resignation of Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever and many other long-time members of the APS: "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." No reasonable person can read this and avoid the conclusion that APS is declaring the human impact "incontrovertible." Otherwise there would be no logical link from "global warming" to the shrill call for mitigation.
The APS response to the concerns of its membership was better than that of any other scientific society, but it was not democratic. The management of APS took months to review the statement quoted above, and it eventually declared that not a word needed to be changed, though some 750 words were added to try to explain what the original 157 words really meant. APS members were permitted to send in comments but the comments were never made public.
In spite of the obstinacy of some in APS management, APS members of good will are supporting the establishment of a politics-free, climate physics study group within the Society. If successful, it will facilitate much needed discussion, debate, and independent research in the physics of climate.
In summary, science progresses by testing predictions against real world data obtained from direct observations and rigorous experiments. The stakes in the global-warming debate are much too high to ignore this observational evidence and declare the science settled. Though there are many more scientists who are extremely well qualified and have reached the same conclusions we have, we stress again that science is not a democratic exercise and our conclusions must be based on observational evidence.
The computer-model predictions of alarming global warming have seriously exaggerated the warming by CO2 and have underestimated other causes. Since CO2 is not a pollutant but a substantial benefit to agriculture, and since its warming potential has been greatly exaggerated, it is time for the world to rethink its frenzied pursuit of decarbonization at any cost.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antoninio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
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-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
however when minimum guidelines are set the are at a bare minimum and rarely enforced,,,were not even completing the baby steps.... that also goes for asking for minimal lifestyle changes also which are not occurring.
cant be said enough
. "The point here is, we need a rapid transition to renewable (energy), and avoid committing to long-term fossil fuel use if we are to get within the limits (of reducing global warming to less than 2 C)."
Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/fossil+f ... z1n6tsqxoy
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
I dont own a car. I live with people who own cars. I take the bus, walk and borrow the compact the car sparingly.
Recycling is like the bug squashing... Im freaked when others throw their shit in the garbage.
I buy what I need. Very rare I buy new items.
I live less than the 100 item rule.
I try to support retailers whom are against big box consumerism.
Its pretty easy. Just to name a few.
There are a lot of things you can do.
(lol I freak out when the roomies let the water run while brushing their teeth! Im like fuck I could have done all the dishes while you did that!)
Integrity? Whats that?
— Socrates
I haven't been following along, but are you justifying stealing?
"Humans seem to be capable of nearly any foolishness in a noble cause."
— Socrates
RealCLimate's response to the WSJ article pretty much sums up what I've said in previous posts on Global Warming denial:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11066%3Cbr
Bickmore on the WSJ response
Filed under:
Climate modelling
Climate Science
Instrumental Record
IPCC
— group @ 24 February 2012
Guest commentary from Barry Bickmore (repost)
The Wall Street Journal posted yet another op-ed by 16 scientists and engineers, which even include a few climate scientists(!!!). Here is the editor’s note to explain the context.
Editor’s Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of“No Need to Panic About Global Warming,” an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.
A relative sent me the article, asking for my thoughts on it. Here’s what I said in response.
Hi [Name Removed],
I don’t have time to do a full reply, but I’ll take apart a few of their main points.
The WSJ authors’ main point is that if the data doesn’t conform to predictions, the theory is “falsified”. They claim to show that global mean temperature data hasn’t conformed to climate model predictions, and so the models are falsified.
But let’s look at the graph. They have a temperature plot, which wiggles all over the place, and then they have 4 straight lines that are supposed to represent the model predictions. The line for the IPCC First Assessment Report is clearly way off, but back in 1990 the climate models didn’t include important things like ocean circulation, so that’s hardly surprising. The lines for the next 3 IPCC reports are very similar to one another, though. What the authors don’t tell you is that the lines they plot are really just the average long-term slopes of a bunch of different models. The individual models actually predict that the temperature will go up and down for a few years at a time, but the long-term slope (30 years or more) will be about what those straight lines say. Given that these lines are supposed to be average, long-term slopes, take a look at the temperature data and try to estimate whether the overall slope of the data is similar to the slopes of those three lines (from the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC reports). If you were to calculate the slope of the data WITH error bars, the model predictions would very likely be in that range.
Comparison of the spread of actual IPCC projections (2007) with observations of annual mean temperatures
That brings up another point. All climate models include parameters that aren’t known precisely, so the model projections have to include that uncertainty to be meaningful. And yet, the WSJ authors don’t provide any error bars of any kind! The fact is that if they did so, you would clearly see that the global mean temperature has wiggled around inside those error bars, just like it was supposed to.
So before I go on, let me be blunt about these guys. They know about error bars. They know that it’s meaningless, in a “noisy” system like global climate, to compare projected long-term trends to just a few years of data. And yet, they did. Why? I’ll let you decide.
The WSJ authors say that, although something like 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that humans are causing “significant” global warming, there really is a lot of disagreement about how much humans contribute to the total. The 97% figure comes from a 2009 study by Doran and Zimmerman.
So they don’t like Doran and Zimmerman’s survey, and they would have liked more detailed questions. After all, D&Z asked respondents to say whether they thought humans were causing “significant” temperature change, and who’s to say what is “significant”? So is there no real consensus on the question of how much humans are contributing?
First, every single national/international scientific organization with expertise in this area and every single national academy of science, has issued a statement saying that humans are causing significant global warming, and we ought to do something about it. So they are saying that the human contribution is “significant” enough that we need to worry about it and can/should do something about it. This could not happen unless there was a VERY strong majority of experts. Here is a nice graphic to illustrate this point (H/T Adam Siegel).
But what if these statements are suppressing significant minority views–say 20%. We could do a literature survey and see what percentage of papers published question the consensus. Naomi Oreskes (a prominent science historian) did this in 2004 (see also her WaPo opinion column), surveying a random sample of 928 papers that showed up in a standard database with the search phrase “global climate change” during 1993-2003. Some of the papers didn’t really address the consensus, but many did explicitly or implicitly support it. She didn’t find a single one that went against the consensus. Now, obviously there were some contrarian papers published during that period, but I’ve done some of my own not-very-careful work on this question (using different search terms), and I estimate that during 1993-2003, less than 1% of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate change was contrarian.
Another study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 (Anderegg et al, 2010), looked at the consensus question from a different angle. I’ll let you read it if you want.
Once again, the WSJ authors (at least the few that actually study climate for a living) know very well that they are a tiny minority. So why don’t they just admit that and try to convince people on the basis of evidence, rather than lack of consensus? Well, if their evidence is on par with the graph they produced, maybe their time is well spent trying to cloud the consensus issue.
The WSJ authors further imply that the “scientific establishment” is out to quash any dissent. So even if almost all the papers about climate change go along with the consensus, maybe that’s because the Evil Empire is keeping out those droves of contrarian scientists that exist… somewhere.
The WSJ authors give a couple examples, both of which are ridiculous, but I have personal experience with the Remote Sensing article by Spencer and Braswell, so I’ll address that one. The fact is that Spencer and Braswell published a paper in which they made statistical claims about the difference between some data sets without actually calculating error bars, which is a big no-no, and if they had done the statistics, it would have shown that their conclusions could not be statistically supported. They also said they analyzed certain data, but then left some of it out of the Results that just happened to completely undercut their main claims. This is serious, serious stuff, and it’s no wonder Wolfgang Wagner resigned from his editorship–not because of political pressure, but because he didn’t want his fledgling journal to get a reputation for publishing any nonsense anybody sends in.[Ed. See this discussion]
The level of deception by the WSJ authors and others like them is absolutely astonishing to me.
Barry
PS. Here is a recent post at RealClimate that puts the nonsense about climate models being “falsified” in perspective. The fact is that they aren’t doing too badly, except that they severely UNDERestimate the Arctic sea ice melt rate.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Wall Street speculators purposely raising price on wheat and starving millions of people all over the globe to make money, no I am not justifying their stealing. But thats completely legal.
I assume neither one of your parents read you the bedtime fable of Robin Hood nor did you come to the morally just conclusion it gives its readers.
You know, I know, statistics and data can be skewed. Not only skewed then quotes from reports taken out of context for a double whammy. The problem is does the rest of the world know? or understand. Thats the thing its like constant debridement of a cankerous abscess called propaganda to get to the facts and or a culmination of information by research to figure out the truth.
The thing is people are too caught up in their own crap to take the time to do these things or could be less interested in doing a bit a research to figure things out. So they take what is said for fact from one source and then thats it.
"Steal a little and they'll throw you in jail.
Steal a lot and they'll make you king."
--Bob Dylan
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
All climate models are imprecise because they are models. They are statistical models based on a theory. You can only hope to nail it down as close to the truth as you can get, but knowing you're there, won't ever happen. That's by definition - science. Trial and error.... Hypothesis testing.
It's possible that many of the causal models (saying there's a connection between man-made CO2 and temperature) are almost completely incorrect. They may point to significant correlation of CO2 when, in reality, it's simply due to something like an omitted variable bias. When you include that variable (that's currently not included) in a multivariate analysis the correlation may flip completely or become insignificant.
Since, I've been told to "educate" myself a number of times here (more like indoctrinate, in my opinion). I really suggest global warming supporters take four or five advanced statistical modeling classes, or just simply take 2 graduate econometrics courses. After, then we can actually talk about these models in an educated manner and get into specifics.
Until then, a lot of you are simply cutting and pasting your opinions from green blogs. That was one of the most important points in that wsj article. Those green blogs you keep citing are based, very potentially, on flawed models and are, of course, bias... and there are incentives for them to continue with the charade. No amount of your regurgitation of their information will change that.
Further, no amount of stats provided to you or to them will ever prove that AGW is at all refutable... unless you learn statistics yourself. Science always involves the scientific method, particularly when there's millions of elements/variables at play.
But, keep reading if you'd like.
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