Climategate (GW email leak)

[Mr Skeptic]

The trick, of course, is that if they make it take more than 6 months to exhaust their complaint process, they can't be prosecuted at all. Cause they stalled long enough before saying no. That's the rule.

[bascule]

Given that, there is a very thorough dissection of CRU emails that cast a shadow on many of the defenses thrown abouot for the folks at CRU, as well as Mann, and it's looking more and more like James Hansen and the IPCC will fall before this is all over as well.

 

Yes, the entire house of cards will come crashing down.

 

Wait, what? Please remove your tinfoil hat.

 

Such defenses include:

 

This was isolated... it wasn't.

 

This was only a few scientists... it was quite a few.

 

They weren't influential... They were the gatekeepers for the IPCC

 

You care to defend any of these statements or are you just throwing them around like mud?

 

This was a relatively isolated incident. The majority of climate data remains freely available. Any "skeptic" who wishes can download the data and source code needed to reproduce GISTEMP's analysis. How do you even correlate this to Hansen?

 

While there does appear to be a certain degree of malice involved in some of the individuals implicated, this is for the most part little more than an overblown smear campaign, uncannily occurring around the same time as the Copenhagen summit.

 

This incident has zero effect on climate science as a whole, but I think it does speak volumes about the adversarial nature between the climate science community and "climate skeptics." You should keep in mind that both sides are to blame here. I don't know if you've noticed but "climate skeptics" are sort of, well, dicks who have absolutely no respect for the science.

Edited January 29, 2010 by bascule

[jryan]

Yes, the entire house of cards will come crashing down.

 

Wait, what? Please remove your tinfoil hat.

 

You care to defend any of these statements or are you just throwing them around like mud?

 

Read the review I linked. In it you will find all of the emails addressed individually, and on a time line. What you see there is not an "isolated incident" especially considering the sheer number of scientists that were copied on these emails as well as mentioned in the emails as working with the CRU group on these "unfortunate defenses" over the decade that this snapshot of emails covers.

 

 

This was a relatively isolated incident. The majority of climate data remains freely available. Any "skeptic" who wishes can download the data and source code needed to reproduce GISTEMP's analysis. How do you even correlate this to Hansen?

 

No it doesn't. There is a reason why Hansen has been under a FOIA lawsuit for a few years. Recently the FOIA was resolved in the favor of the plintif, and many Hansen emails, along with his coworkers, have been released.

 

There is a lot of interesting stuff in that release..

 

If the data was readily available there would be no need to the FOIA requests.

 

 

While there does appear to be a certain degree of malice involved in some of the individuals implicated, this is for the most part little more than an overblown smear campaign, uncannily occurring around the same time as the Copenhagen summit.

 

Who's wearing the tin foil hat again? This set of emails shows a 10+ year smear campaign against skeptics, and you spin it in your head to be a smear campaign in the other direction?

 

Your attempt to connect it to Copenhagen is equally misplaced. No matter when this was released it would be connected to some political climate-change event somewhere.

 

This incident has zero effect on climate science as a whole, but I think it does speak volumes about the adversarial nature between the climate science community and "climate skeptics." You should keep in mind that both sides are to blame here. I don't know if you've noticed but "climate skeptics" are sort of, well, dicks who have absolutely no respect for the science.

 

It doesn't? It has, if nothing else, ousted Phil Jones, and more, from their roles at UEA-Cru, frozen one of the three big gridded global climate data sets (CRUTem3), at the same time it has lead to the Met Office issuing a full 3 year audit of HADCrut (another of the three), leaving GISSTemp... which is riddled with problems itself.

 

All that is left is GHCN raw data.. which is problematic for the non-skeptic side because all of the warming claims are taken from the "value added" big three, not GHCN raws. You've sited the GISSTemp today, for example. Which is like using Enron press releases to verify stock value even after internal emails were released where CEOs were ordering the account book hidden.

 

Furthermore it casts real doubt on Michael Mann, who's work has figured prominently in all of the IPCC-ARs since #2.

 

Furthmore, the String of emails in "climategate" wherein Mann and Jones and others discuss how to deny inclusion of studies in the IPCC report created a greater interest in what papers actually WERE included in the most recent IPCC-AR. This lead to the discovery of the Himalayan Glacier claim in the IPCC being tracked back to a non-study opinion piece produced by the non-scientific advocacy group the World Wildlife Fund.

 

The interest in the IPCCs Himalayan embarrassment has lead to greater interest in the origins of the IPCC claims.. which has brought out the questionable links between the head of the IPCC the India energy company TERI. Which has lead to leading climate scientists calling for Pachauri to step down and even a redo on the IPCC itself (here are two: link and link).

 

Furthermore, the problems with the IPCC_AR4 don't stop in the Himalayas. A cursory review of AR4 has turned up 18 more dubious WWF citations for it's claims.

 

That is not a small incident.

[bascule]

Read the review I linked. In it you will find all of the emails addressed individually, and on a time line. What you see there is not an "isolated incident" especially considering the sheer number of scientists that were copied on these emails as well as mentioned in the emails as working with the CRU group on these "unfortunate defenses" over the decade that this snapshot of emails covers.

 

Sorry, I don't play "go fish". Perhaps you'd care to post a link instead of asking me to dig through your previous posts to find it? But even then, it would be helpful for you to pull out the relevant information you want discussed and post it in the forum.

 

No it doesn't. There is a reason why Hansen has been under a FOIA lawsuit for a few years. Recently the FOIA was resolved in the favor of the plintif, and many Hansen emails, along with his coworkers, have been released.

 

If the data was readily available there would be no need to the FOIA requests.

 

What lawsuit? GISS released the emails as part of an FOIA request. There was no "lawsuit". This was a request for email sent between Hansen and his coworkers, not his code or his data.

 

The data and the code to GISTEMP are both freely available. If you have a Python interpreter you can download the CCC implementation of GISTEMP and run it on your own computer.

 

Who's wearing the tin foil hat again? This set of emails shows a 10+ year smear campaign against skeptics, and you spin it in your head to be a smear campaign in the other direction?

 

Yes, that's precisely what's happening. There has certainly been an undue smear campaign targeted at certain scientists as a result of cherry picked phrases. The "skeptic" community dubbed this incident "Climategate" for christ's sake...

 

Also: this is what happens because scientists are human. Clearly they are frustrated because there's a large and vocal group challenging the science who doesn't care very much about factual accuracy so much as advancing their agenda. What they did was wrong, but to allege some sort of conspiracy to smear skeptics is simply a paranoid delusion.

 

You've sited the GISSTemp today, for example. Which is like using Enron press releases to verify stock value even after internal emails were released where CEOs were ordering the account book hidden.

 

More FUD. If you'd like to continue to discuss the validity of GISTEMP perhaps you could do so on this thread. Until then perhaps you could avoid slanderous comparisons?

 

The interest in the IPCCs Himalayan embarrassment has lead to greater interest in the origins of the IPCC claims.. which has brought out the questionable links between the head of the IPCC the India energy company TERI. Which has lead to leading climate scientists calling for Pachauri to step down and even a redo on the IPCC itself (here are two: link and link).

 

Leading climate scientists! Wait... leading climate scientist? jryan, I almost find the hyperbole you use to make your claims humorous.

 

Furthermore, the problems with the IPCC_AR4 don't stop in the Himalayas. A cursory review of AR4 has turned up 18 more dubious WWF citations for it's claims.

 

That is not a small incident.

 

Random accusations on a blog make it not a small incident. Right.

 

Putting aside all these claims of guilt by association and blogs challenging science, what we have are a group of scientists at a university who wrongly withheld their data, and a smattering of scientists in other institutions who who are also implicated. I call that a small incident.

 

Withholding their data is wrong and for that they have been rightfully admonished (we'll see where Mann ends up but he certainly seems deserving of admonishment too). UEA CRU is not exactly going to be a go to place to advance your climate science career anymore.

 

Other than that, so what?

[bascule]

Now now Bascule, you're smarter than that! Don't ask a climate sceptic to actually post the most relevant paragraph or 2! (I've already tried with this guy).

 

Yes, I've tried it too, repeatedly. Pretty much every time I talk to jryan he posts one or more blatant factual inaccuracies (ostensibly cribbeed by some climate science denial blog). I tend to chalk it up to his ignorance as opposed to malice, as I certainly wouldn't want to follow in the footsteps of climate science deniers and assume malice from the offset. Perhaps one day jryan will have sufficient knowledge to actually debate the topic as opposed to blindly reposting factual inaccuracies from various climate science deniers blogs. One can only hope!

 

I really don't want to write jryan off as a troll. I'd rather try to educate wherever possible. But jryan seems more of a fly by climate science denial spammer than someone who actually comes here to debate and learn the other side of the argument. I will continue to try to educate but each time he comes by, blogspams us, then disappears I lose hope.

[jryan]

Sorry, I don't play "go fish". Perhaps you'd care to post a link instead of asking me to dig through your previous posts to find it? But even then, it would be helpful for you to pull out the relevant information you want discussed and post it in the forum.

 

I'm not asking you to play "Go Fish" I am asking you to read a specific article for which I also provided a link.

 

 

 

What lawsuit? GISS released the emails as part of an FOIA request. There was no "lawsuit". This was a request for email sent between Hansen and his coworkers, not his code or his data.

 

 

 

There was this one (due to 3 years of stonewalling)

 

And this one

 

And here is another in the works.

 

The data and the code to GISTEMP are both freely available. If you have a Python interpreter you can download the CCC implementation of GISTEMP and run it on your own computer.

 

They are freely available now, and from a third party. See the CA links I provided for the history of the Fortran release and the year leading up to the release. I've provided the links.

 

 

Yes, that's precisely what's happening. There has certainly been an undue smear campaign targeted at certain scientists as a result of cherry picked phrases. The "skeptic" community dubbed this incident "Climategate" for christ's sake...

 

It's not cherry picked phrases. Again, read the article I provided. It is far more than the sound bites that were used by various media outlets.

 

Also: this is what happens because scientists are human. Clearly they are frustrated because there's a large and vocal group challenging the science who doesn't care very much about factual accuracy so much as advancing their agenda. What they did was wrong, but to allege some sort of conspiracy to smear skeptics is simply a paranoid delusion.

 

Read the article... not sure how many times I need to ask you. It is more than just scientists mad about pesky denialist outsidersl. There are numerous instances of these climatologists eating their own after one dares speak off the reservation about their views on AGW.

 

 

 

More FUD. If you'd like to continue to discuss the validity of GISTEMP perhaps you could do so on this thread. Until then perhaps you could avoid slanderous comparisons?

 

It is not slanderous to point to documented blunders by a scientist and wonder about that scientists attention to detail. Truth is the best defense.

 

 

Leading climate scientists! Wait... leading climate scientist? jryan, I almost find the hyperbole you use to make your claims humorous.

 

So who do you consider leading the way? Mann.. Jones.. Briffa... Schmidtt?

 

 

Random accusations on a blog make it not a small incident. Right.

 

They aren't random accusations on a blog, they are their own words. Read it. If you are right then you have nothing to fear.

 

Putting aside all these claims of guilt by association and blogs challenging science, what we have are a group of scientists at a university who wrongly withheld their data, and a smattering of scientists in other institutions who who are also implicated. I call that a small incident.

 

A small incident that thyrough one of the three climate data warehouses into upheaval, and has snowballed into revelations that threaten the leadership of the IPCC. It is not a small incident.

 

Withholding their data is wrong and for that they have been rightfully admonished (we'll see where Mann ends up but he certainly seems deserving of admonishment too). UEA CRU is not exactly going to be a go to place to advance your climate science career anymore.

 

Other than that, so what?

 

It's really pointless discussing this with you when you have zero interest in an actual exchange of information. So you wantto know so what?

 

Just keep you eyes peeled, my friend. Over the next two years you will see "so what".

[The Bear's Key]

Read the article... not sure how many times I need to ask you. It is more than just scientists mad about pesky denialist outsidersl. There are numerous instances of these climatologists eating their own after one dares speak off the reservation about their views on AGW.

Kind of weak, friend.

 

If you've read the article, just supply relevant bits to people who ask.

 

1. highlight the damning words (using your mouse)

2. right-click on the highlighted text

3. select "copy" from the menu. The text is held on your computer's memory.

4. Back on this website...right-click into a blank text area (of your reply).

5. select "paste".

 

It doesn't help your case to ignore requests when it's clear you have access to the info. Makes it seem as if you don't grasp the material linked to and you're just relying on the seeming "expertise" of the author...to think for you.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Anyone finding this thread takes a long time to load? Why doesn't this forum split threads into 'pages' the way other forums do for quicker loading of the most recent conversation?

 

It's now even slow to pan up and down the thread, cancelling out any perceived 'speed gains' in cancelling the 'pages' function.

 

It does. You'll probably want to go to your User Control Panel, hit Edit Options, scroll down to Thread Display Options, and adjust Number of Posts to Show Per Page.

[swansont]

It's not cherry picked phrases.

 

Oh, please. If I see another critic harp about using a "trick" I think I'll puke. Integration by parts and the chain rule are math "tricks;" they are perfectly valid and there is nothing insidious about them other than being part of calculus. There absolutely no legitimate reason, other than cherry-picking sensationalism, for the media to have mentioned this at all.

[bascule]

There was this one (due to 3 years of stonewalling)

 

And here is another in the works.

 

Psst, these are about the same story, which was a threat to sue, not an actual lawsuit.

 

And this one

 

Hmmm...

 

Judicial Watch' date=' the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to obtain records from the Office of former Vice President Cheney related to CIA interrogation techniques.[/indent']

 

Nothing about NASA GISS there. Do you even bother clicking your own links?

[jryan]

Oh, please. If I see another critic harp about using a "trick" I think I'll puke. Integration by parts and the chain rule are math "tricks;" they are perfectly valid and there is nothing insidious about them other than being part of calculus. There absolutely no legitimate reason, other than cherry-picking sensationalism, for the media to have mentioned this at all.

 

 

Have I harped on "the trick"? All I have done is link you to an extended review of ALL emails, not the one or two that made it into the press. If you don't want to read it then say so, but hiding behind such silly dismissal tactics is really no better than the news agencies that release one email and call it the smoking gun.

 

My suggestion remains: Read the article.. if it is any incentive to you we may even agree on some of the questionable conclusions of the author. But basing your belief on the smallness of these emails because of the chosen media hype focuses on very limited aspects of the whole isn't really any better.

 

And, having read the emails in their entirety, I can also tell you that those defending the emails (or playing down the significance) are as guilty as those repeating "hide the decline" ad nausium.

 

As for the "trick" and the "hide the decline", most pundits in the news get the significance completely wrong on both sides. The issue is not whether splicing observed data onto modeled data is valid in statistics or calculus, it is that the model in question diverged from the observed trend dramatically which called into question the predictive abilities of the model, rather than hiding an observed temperature decline.

 

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

 

Psst, these are about the same story, which was a threat to sue, not an actual lawsuit.

 

There were two filings, one on 9/12/2007 and one of 9/20/2007, both by Christopher Horner of CEI. Each requesting different data related (one to the Y2K correction, and the other more general) (link)

 

The December 2009 lawsuit declaration was due to the lack of response to the CEI FOIA requests of 2007.

 

 

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to obtain records from the Office of former Vice President Cheney related to CIA interrogation techniques.

 

Nothing about NASA GISS there. Do you even bother clicking your own links?

 

See here: Judicial Watch press release. In which they state "These new documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), include..."

 

In this case JW appears to have received at least some of the data requested by CEI in 2007, how this will effect the CEI lawsuit I couldn't say.

Edited February 1, 2010 by jryan
Consecutive posts merged.

[Mr Skeptic]

Have I harped on "the trick"? All I have done is link you to an extended review of ALL emails, not the one or two that made it into the press. If you don't want to read it then say so, but hiding behind such silly dismissal tactics is really no better than the news agencies that release one email and call it the smoking gun.

 

No one is going to read through thousands or hundreds of thousands of emails just cause you asked them to. Neither science nor discussion nor courts of law work like this. No, the accuser points to some specific thing, make a specific argument, with specific evidence. If the evidence is interpreted differently then you get more evidence that your interpretation is correct against the evidence that your interpretation is incorrect. If after that the evidence is still ambiguous (ie, you could not prove your case), then you lose, and everyone ignores you. You have to be able to reject the null hypothesis if you wish to make a claim.

[swansont]

Have I harped on "the trick"?

 

No. Did I claim that you did? You responded to

 

Yes, that's precisely what's happening. There has certainly been an undue smear campaign targeted at certain scientists as a result of cherry picked phrases. The "skeptic" community dubbed this incident "Climategate" for christ's sake...

 

so we were talking about members of the "skeptic" community, and you denied that they cherry picked phrases. They did.

 

Stop moving the goalposts.

[foodchain]

What do you all think of this?

 

I think a part of the problem is if you want just using science. Why at any point in time should the people or scientists working on global warming know exactly what they are doing, in regards to the problem at hand which is global warming I think that's a hefty standard to set. More or less maybe its wrong to suggest that the science should just be correct instantly, all of the time, and there is no need for hypothesis testing.

 

The other issue that I can think of immediately is just rising CO2 levels. If you can prove that increasing the ppm constantly since the industrial revolution is bad and why, currently imperfect models should not just be scraped. To me that would be similar to destroying any other theory because its currently imperfect.

 

As for the bias or corrupting, global warming is not a simple issue. In it you can find the grounds morally for needing to change world economic systems.

[jryan]

No one is going to read through thousands or hundreds of thousands of emails just cause you asked them to. Neither science nor discussion nor courts of law work like this. No, the accuser points to some specific thing, make a specific argument, with specific evidence. If the evidence is interpreted differently then you get more evidence that your interpretation is correct against the evidence that your interpretation is incorrect. If after that the evidence is still ambiguous (ie, you could not prove your case), then you lose, and everyone ignores you. You have to be able to reject the null hypothesis if you wish to make a claim.

 

That is an odd argument. If you were to point out a study that you wanted me to read would you not expect me to read it before dismissing it out of hand because you hadn't sufficiently prechewed it for me? Are we really that degenerate a sound ite culture that we can't be bothered to read an article in it's entirety anymore?

 

My assertion is that the emails have broader implications than are encapsulated in a "hide the decline" soundbite... I could pick out all the emails in the article that point to my conclusion but I would then be writing the article again because it is all of them.

 

In a court of law, if 1000 emails point to a specific conclusion that the prosecution or defense wants to make you had better believe that they would check them all into evidence and expect them all to be considered.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

No. Did I claim that you did? You responded to

 

 

 

so we were talking about members of the "skeptic" community, and you denied that they cherry picked phrases. They did.

 

Stop moving the goalposts.

 

I am not moving the goal posts, Swansnot, you are. I am not discussing cherry picked emails I am discussing tree full of cherries. I have given you my source, I asked you to read it, you dismissed it out of hand based on a cherry picked email that you are tired of hearing about which was never my assertion.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

I think a part of the problem is if you want just using science. Why at any point in time should the people or scientists working on global warming know exactly what they are doing, in regards to the problem at hand which is global warming I think that's a hefty standard to set. More or less maybe its wrong to suggest that the science should just be correct instantly, all of the time, and there is no need for hypothesis testing.

 

The other issue that I can think of immediately is just rising CO2 levels. If you can prove that increasing the ppm constantly since the industrial revolution is bad and why, currently imperfect models should not just be scraped. To me that would be similar to destroying any other theory because its currently imperfect.

 

As for the bias or corrupting, global warming is not a simple issue. In it you can find the grounds morally for needing to change world economic systems.

 

I'm not asking to scrap the current models, per se. I believe the conclusions of the models are insufficient to the point of being in-actionable.

 

If the changes in input due to new water vapor studies and CO2 sensitivity lead to models with greater predictive power (indeed, as science moves forward the disparate models should start looking more and more alike as they are all approaching the same truth) them the models will appear to be right on their contributors but wrong on the percentages.

[swansont]

I am not moving the goal posts, Swansnot, you are. I am not discussing cherry picked emails I am discussing tree full of cherries. I have given you my source, I asked you to read it, you dismissed it out of hand based on a cherry picked email that you are tired of hearing about which was never my assertion.

 

Perhaps you shouldn't make blanket dismissal of statements, then. bascule noted the cherry-picked statements, and you said "It's not cherry picked phrases. "

 

Not something like "there's more to it than cherry-picked phrases." (not emails, phrases) You simply denied it outright, then defended your statement by saying you hadn't harped on it, which is a different thing entirely. (BTW, "the trick" is mentioned in the link you provided, too)

[jryan]

Perhaps you shouldn't make blanket dismissal of statements, then. bascule noted the cherry-picked statements, and you said "It's not cherry picked phrases. "

 

Not something like "there's more to it than cherry-picked phrases." (not emails, phrases) You simply denied it outright, then defended your statement by saying you hadn't harped on it, which is a different thing entirely. (BTW, "the trick" is mentioned in the link you provided, too)

 

And indeed I hadn't, nor had the person who wrote the article I provided.

 

Bascule made the wholly incorrect assumption that I had provided "cherry picked phrases" and I pointed out that the article I provided was not cherry picked phrases at all but rather a meticulous commentary on the entire set of emails in chronological order and linked back to the source data for anyone's need for secondary verification... which is the exact opposite of "cherry picking".

 

So again, what I provided is not cherry picking and moving forward do not classify it as such. All such statements do is prove that you have made a determination of the contents without even a cursory evaluation of the material.

[jryan]

Jryan, you haven't answered my questions!

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showpost.php?p=541153&postcount=314

Where's the evidence of a fraud, where's the demonstration of a worldwide conspiracy, where's the millions being poured into bribes, where's the false propaganda, where's the Congressional findings that blackmail influenced the White House, and where's the documented cases of other scientists ACTUALLY being silenced and not allowed to speak to the media?

 

Exxon and the former White House ACTUALLY DID all this to CLIMATE SCIENTISTS (not the other way around!) If you had anything significant you'd post it.

 

You're firing blanks mate.

 

Isn't it a Science Forum policy to back claims specifically? Isn't this repeated, non-specific promotion of an overly hysterical Denialist article qualifying as spam yet? How many times do we have to ask this guy to post something specific before the moderators step in? This thread is going to the dogs.

 

 

I didn't comment because it didn't read like a serious claim... but now that I lknow you believe it is, I'll touch on it briefly (which is as much as it deserves):

 

1) "Repeating the 26 myths" - Well, you have provided a list of supposed myths, but no real evidence of "repeating them"... nor is that a "smear campaign against climatologists" - Conclusion: A gratuitous assertion that can be gratuitously refuted.

 

2) You claim smearing of "Every scientific academy on the planet" and then provide a wiki link to a list of scientific organizations... but no smears. There is no evidence beyond what appears to be the absurd assumption that disagreeing with a public stance by a science organization equals a "smear". Conclusion: at best an absurd assertion not worthy of response without clarification.

 

3) Without agreeing with Lord Monkton I can still say that your evidence refuting Monkton's claim is an article that says "Nu-uh!" while not even doing a great job of establishing that Monkton claims AGW is an attempt at world communism.. much less address his concerns directly. So if you want to find something with more meat on it's bones feel free. I am unfamiliar with Lord Monkton's work beyond cursory reference.. and none of it on his claims of world communism.

 

4) A illy photo of Lord Monkton... which is beyond pointless and well into the even more seedy realm of trivial character assassination via physical appearance.

 

5) On Exxon Funding - Well, my first question would be "So?", Greenpeace has a $360 million budget of which far more than $8 million goes to fund campaigns that counter Exxon's paltry $8 million investment.

 

My second response would be: How would such an investment be viewed if it were found at a later date that CO2 was not a primary drive of Earth's climate? Any wrongdoing by Exxon is nothing more than a "begging the question fallacy". That is to say you must first assume that what Exxon is doing is wrong before you can conclude that what Exxon is doing is wrong... so Exxon's expenditures can not be used as evidence that AGW theory is correct, or that it is a smear, for that matter.

 

6) On A conservative think tank funding anti-IPCC papers: Given that this is the same IPCC report riddled with inaccuracies and publicly maligned by it's own lead authors, it would seem that that conservative think tank was on the right track. Or at the very least no as superfluous as Boxer and Sharon Begley seem to think. The IPCC apparently needed a healthy dose of dissent in the creation of AR4... but it didn't exist and the final product is shaping up to be a shabby mess.

 

7) On the silencing of scientists (primarily James Hansen) - This is demonstrably wrong as Hansen made that claim numerous times on Charlie Rose, Dianne Rehm, and elsewhere while caling for the imprisonment of oil execs... and he still has his job at GISS. It's amazing how often the man turns up in those 8 years talking openly about the administration and his views on Global Warming when he was being silenced.. aint it?

 

Or, as his former supervisor put it: “In his more than 1,000 speeches, interviews, publications and public appearances since 1998, it is difficult for me to believe that Dr. Hansen has even been bothered,” Theon said"

 

Edit: By the way, POM, if you intend to continue sending me threats via PM then you should have the decency to not block replies.

Edited February 1, 2010 by jryan

[Mr Skeptic]

That is an odd argument. If you were to point out a study that you wanted me to read would you not expect me to read it before dismissing it out of hand because you hadn't sufficiently prechewed it for me? Are we really that degenerate a sound ite culture that we can't be bothered to read an article in it's entirety anymore?

 

Are you serious? When did we ever ask you to look at the raw data of all the studies ever done? A study does exactly what I said you should do: make a specific claim, and back it up with evidence. Not just point at a bunch of stuff and say that it backs up a vague claim.

 

My assertion is that the emails have broader implications than are encapsulated in a "hide the decline" soundbite... I could pick out all the emails in the article that point to my conclusion but I would then be writing the article again because it is all of them.

 

Well what you were asked for was a specific example that backs up your claim (and what specifically you were claiming). You can't just have a bunch of bogus data to back up your claim... you need to show that each email you claim backs up your claim, does in fact do so.

 

In a court of law, if 1000 emails point to a specific conclusion that the prosecution or defense wants to make you had better believe that they would check them all into evidence and expect them all to be considered.

 

Exactly. So which ones have evidence, and what evidence is it? Would they also put a whole bunch of totally unrelated emails and tell people to look through them for the specific incriminating ones?

 

----

 

And why would you expect us to read your links when the evidence shows you either have no idea how to make a coherent argument or have not read your own links?

[jryan]

I'll get to the rest of your points later POM, but as for "not threatening", here is the entirety of your PM to me. I'll leave it to our fellow readers to draw their own conclusions:

 

 

Subject: What a Joke

 

This is roughly how I reported you a few posts ago. If you get specific soon' date=' it will all go away, but if you don't it's about to get ugly.

 

******

 

Isn't it a Science Forum policy to back claims specifically?

 

Isn't this repeated, non-specific promotion of an overly hysterical Denialist article qualifying as spam yet? How many times do we have to ask this guy to post something specific before the moderators step in? This thread is going to the dogs.[/quote']

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Good lord, guys. Grow up. Moderators are not weapons to be thrown around, and threatening "I reported your post" is pointless. We will deal with the report if we believe there's a problem. (We're still discussing it at the moment.)

 

Now kindly get back on topic. Using threats and character assassination is not a good idea.

[swansont]

And indeed I hadn't, nor had the person who wrote the article I provided.

 

Bascule made the wholly incorrect assumption that I had provided "cherry picked phrases" and I pointed out that the article I provided was not cherry picked phrases at all but rather a meticulous commentary on the entire set of emails in chronological order and linked back to the source data for anyone's need for secondary verification... which is the exact opposite of "cherry picking".

 

So again, what I provided is not cherry picking and moving forward do not classify it as such. All such statements do is prove that you have made a determination of the contents without even a cursory evaluation of the material.

 

That's not the exchange at all. You need to go back and reread what was written, because this revisionist history is a problem. Mostly because there is a record of what was actually said, so it's easy enough to go back and check.

 

Yes, that's precisely what's happening. There has certainly been an undue smear campaign targeted at certain scientists as a result of cherry picked phrases. The "skeptic" community dubbed this incident "Climategate" for christ's sake...

 

Nothing in here about you. It's about the broader picture, and the "skeptic" community.

 

This has happened a number of times — your summaries of what was written being wrong. You end up with strawman arguments as a result, and it really is a problem.

[jryan]

I never said there was anything about me. I was commenting on bascule's dismissal of the emails and the article I provided because some of them had been "cherry picked". My point was it was a worthless dismissal because that is not what the author of the article I provided was doing.

 

Had I posted an article about "hide the decline" then his defense would have merritt. But that is not what I provided.

 

In truth there has been a good deal of "cherry picking" on both sides of the email debate, with "hide the decline" on one end and "no big deal" on the other. The latter is particularly amusing to me because the "no big deal" people often dismiss the issue saying it was just a few scientists behaving badly (which is wring) and then a post or two later referencing RealClimate.org which is run by the very same poorly behaved climatologists.

 

Furthermore, had you read the Costella article the latest revelation of Jones fudging, or not checking data at all in his IPCC article on UHI would come as no surprise. In the emails you can see Tom Wigley berating Jones and others for there refusal to address the quality of the China data up front (the UHI data contained no measurement coordinates for the "rural" stations making it impossible to determine potential UHI influence at all).

 

This ties in with the daily discoveries of non-scientific references in IPCC-AR4. Today it is a claim in AR4 of the effect of climate on the poor. In the section (here) they reference "(Wilgoren and Roane, 1999)", which it turns out is a story in the New York Times.

 

Bringing the total of non-scientific references to IPCC impact statements to about 20.

 

So surely if reporting falsehoods is a smear then the IPCC is a good source of smears against climate science.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

1. The peer review process has established that these are Denialist myths, and the New Scientist article I refer to shows where the peer review process does so! These are the same myths all your anti-IPCC 'heroes' recirculate, you should know them all by now.

 

The peer review process itself is a myth for the IPCC. The skeptics the closest thing to a peer review process for the IPCC according to it's own

 

2. I'm talking about the typical Denialist conspiracy-theory claim that would slander every climatologist and climate sensitive politician as being involved in the greatest scientific fraud of all time! If you're prepared to knock down this paranoid world-view and admit the science, then great! But until that time, while you fight the science and portray global warming as a huge fraud perpetrated by a few nasty, sinister, evil, conspiratorial, conniving scientists at the CRU, the 'gatekeepers' of the IPCC, the spearhead of the scientific community, the puppet-masters of the whole global warming "thang"... then you are also slandering by implication EVERY other scientific organisation on the planet that has ever independently measured the refraction properties of Co2 or run a simple Radiative Forcing Equation to check the math on how much Co2 is influencing climate!

 

So you tell me, from what does, say, the American Physics Association draw it's conclusions from if not the IPCC? Surely they aren't conducting an IPCC scale investigation (minus the newpaper clippings, that is)?

 

3. You're quite uninformed about Lord Monckton's claims, aren't you?

 

And what is your point here? James Hansen believes that oil executives should be tried in criminal court for crimes against the Earth

 

But this is where the global warming conspiracy nut-jobs contradict themselves. I wrote a blog on it here. On the one hand the "Great Global Warming Swindle" nutters claim it is all a conspiracy to keep Africa poor and stop their development, presumably so they are dependent on Western nations extracting their resources for them? (I never could figure out WHY we'd want to keep Africa poor). Now Lord Monckton is on the public record as stating it is a global communist conspiracy to send TOO MUCH money to poorer nations and Africa... so much money it basically amounts to a "COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT!" (Oh the humanity!)

 

That's two separate claims, POM. Sending money directly to African kleptocrat dictatorships to not develop (read: increase CO2 output) in a bad idea, and it DOES keep Africa from developing. The Mugabes of the African continent are perfectly happy taking money from first world countries when they are all but required not to spend it on bettering their population. They stash it in personal accounts and go merrily on with their day.

 

You have made the error of equating money with development.. which may have a tangential relationship in the first world, but the same is not true in Africa. Especially when spending cash on constructing homes and industry ensures that they will be paid less the next time around.

 

A word of advice: if you are going to work with the Denialists, can you please tell them to at least co-ordinate their conspiracy theories because at the moment they are contradicting each other and sounding like morons!

 

I find your argument to be rather naive at it's roots. I think you need to go back to the drawing board and erase all the "more money = development" rationale.. especially as it applies to the third world... or actually insofar as it doesn't apply to the third world at all.

 

What carbon trading results in in Africa is taking money from disgustingly rich western companies and depositing that money into Swiss bank accounts of obscenely rich Arfican kleptocrats.

 

Well, that and also carbon trading is a fraud machine in Europe that has not reduced CO2 emissions at all.

 

(note also that European Cap&Trade created $132bn in virtual currency almost over night, making it twice the size of Exxon, and completely dependant on the existence of Global Warming.

 

(aside: The BBC pension is also heavily invested in climate change)

 

More later.

[swansont]

Well, that and also carbon trading is a fraud machine in Europe that has not reduced CO2 emissions at all.

 

Wait, what? Criminals exist, and it was a matter of tax fraud. How does that matter?

 

An included link shows that

 

Emissions among industries covered by the E.U. system fell between 4 percent and 6 percent during 2008 compared with increases of roughly 1 percent in the two previous years, according to analysts who reviewed the figures.

 

Is that what you meant by "has not reduced CO2 emissions at all?"

[jryan]

Wait, what? Criminals exist, and it was a matter of tax fraud. How does that matter?

 

An included link shows that

 

It matters because Cap-and-Trade rewards such criminality rather than ward against it. For example: The Cap-and-Trade system in Europe reward at it's outset heavy CO2 emissions.. since there was no real way of quantifying emissions pre-Cap-and-trade the start of the program was a matter of declaration by the producer.

 

As such it rewarded CO2 producers who overstated their own CO2 emissions, awarding them more carbon credits than they actually deserved in the system, allowing them to then turn around and sell the credits to new businesses for a profit without ever actually reducing their own emissions.

 

I'll track it down, but there is a fascinating article showing a parallel between European cap-and-trade and the international airport slotting trade market.

 

Until then, here is one report of the rise in CO2 production in Europe.

 

And another from the following year.

 

In your next quote I will address your counter argument for 2008 and onward.

 

But getting back to cap-and-trade in general, the trouble is that there is no good way of ridding the system of fraudulent offsets, so a measure of reduction by simply counting the offsets will fail to be practical until such time as actual CO2 output matches the inflated offset chits in the market at the program's inception.

 

Even on the up and up it gets dicey internationally when you will have places like Zimbabwe and Somalia that have no designs on large building projects selling offsets they never intend to use to companies that WILL use them to increase their CO2 output. This servers to compound the already ineffective cap-and-trade system. This is going on to varying degrees already within the EU.

 

Emissions among industries covered by the E.U. system fell between 4 percent and 6 percent during 2008 compared with increases of roughly 1 percent in the two previous years, according to analysts who reviewed the figures.

 

Is that what you meant by "has not reduced CO2 emissions at all?"

 

It depends on the method used to evaluate the CO2 reductions. If they are doing so on the readily available offset market data it's problematic due to the reasons already discussed. This WSJ explains the trouble with EU-ETS estimates and the trouble inherent in the EU Cap-and-Trade moving forward.

 

Also, it is increasingly apparent that any redution in CO2 emissions following 2008 were due largely to the global recession and not Cap-and-Trade policy. I suppose you could argue that the EU-ETS contributed to the global recession... but I'm guessing you don't want to go there.