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Comments 63801 to 63850:
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Dennis at 05:38 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Re: are these real? The fact that Carter, Taylor and also Watts (over at Bishop Hill) have addressed these without challenging their authenticity certainly suggests that at least their information in them is accurate. Also worth thinking about is this: All the documents except the "Confidential Memo" appear to been PDF's generated via the computer applications they were composed on. The "confidential memo," however, looks like it was scanned. There's a graininess to the document and shadows to the margin typical of when one photocopies or scans the document. This, to me (OK, I read too many spy novels) is that this was deleted from the computer it was composed on and someone scanned a paper copy. That suggests an inside job; you had to have a physical copy. OK, before I start sounding like one of the climategate conspirators I'll stop. -
Sapient Fridge at 05:31 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Much to my amazement The Register wrote a fairly balanced article on this subject as well. They normally have a solidly anti-science "skeptic" stance written by Lewis Page and Andrew Orlowski (Wikipedia entry here) so I'm pleasantly suprised at them, for a change. -
Philippe Chantreau at 05:26 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Eric considering the quality (cough!) and the influence of Idso's miserable pile of nonsense, 6 figures is way overpaid. Then again, it's not clear that anyone at Heartland can actually appreciate the true quality of what he puts out. By their perception, it probably reads like pure gold. -
chris at 05:26 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
You are playing semantic games elsa, since you are using false logic (constructing a non sequitur) to arrive at a false conclusion (i.e. that "AGW is untestable in any meaningful way"). Since AGW is indeed testable, at the very least according to the well established and oft-repeated criteria I described in post #39, there's obviously something wrong with your logic (it's easy to see that the problem is a semantic flaw based on a false premise [*]). [*] The false premise being your "All we can do is use (iv) as a starting point, which really amounts to assuming that the theory is correct...", which is bogus. -
Philippe Chantreau at 05:23 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
DeSmogBlog still doan as of 10.22 US Pacific time. Wonder what's going on. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:14 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa wrote "It also (as with most climate predictions) does not come up with a straightforward relationship between CO2 and temperature but a relationship between the change in CO2 and the change in temperature. Quite why that is I am never sure." If there are things that you don't understand, then just ask. There are plenty of knowledgable posters here would would be happy to explain. However if you repeatedly critise a theory based on your misunderstanding of the physics, and respond to the rebuttal of the criticism with another criticism it comes across as playing games or trolling. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:09 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa@46 As I said, try Fourier. Fourier knew that gasses could absorb what we would no call IR radiation. From this he inferred that these gasses in the atmosphere would cause the world to be warmer than it would otherwise be. That theory was not made on the basis of obervations of the Earths temperature, and IIRC not confirmed until the work of Arrhenius. "It also (as with most climate predictions) does not come up with a straightforward relationship between CO2 and temperature but a relationship between the change in CO2 and the change in temperature." Again your lack of understanding of climate physics is showing. The relationship between CO2 concentrations and radiative forcing is given. However the relationship between forcing and temperature (climate sensitivity) depends on a variety of other other factors, so it would be naive to expect a simple relationship between temperature and CO2 alone. If you are not intending to play semantic games, I suggest you revise your posting style as it is very much the impression you are giving. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:08 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
DeSmogBlog appears to be down. Anyone know why? Too much traffic? Denial-of-service attack? Black helicopter assault? -
DSL at 05:06 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa, do you now understand the difference between the Foster and Rahmstorf graph and the elevator graph? -
actually thoughtful at 05:04 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Phila: "As I see it, an objection to leaks in this climate actually undermines the moral standards it attempts to invoke." I appreciate your acknowledgement that there is a moral issue worth discussing. If by "objections to leaks" you mean jail time for the whistle blower, I'm not sure I agree. I would like to think that were I in that person's shoes, I would have done the same thing (ie released the documents). I think ethically his/her position is very clear. By which I mean this person was forced to chose between "follow the law" and "follow the ethically correct thing" and their actions indicate they took the ethically correct path (made difficult by the opposition in law). And I don't know that what the whistle blower did is illegal - some great comments upthread defining whistle blower (in Australia at least) and laying out the possible illegal activities of the Heritage Foundation (which move the whistle blower to the legally safer area of blowing the whistle on illegal activities. In my life I have found great value is seeing the grey. That doesn't make me a "warmist" or any such thing, just allowing honorable opposition a face-saving way out. As for dishonorable opposition? Let them go the way of the Heritage Foundation (which, if there is any justice will be into well deserved oblivion). However, I can't imagine the people giving big money to the Heartland Foundation giving up - even if the Heritage Foundation falls (which is highly unlikely, given the folks who support them already know they are a crooked), this work will continue through a multi-headed guerrilla war style effort. Whether this is the tipping point or it is this + the next El Nino isn't know yet, but I remain optimistic (while recalling that there are still smokers even after all the lies were revealed). -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:02 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
What is so stunning about Idso's (3 of them) getting six figures? That pays for a few papers and the co2science.org website. Other than their ongoing newsletter, a lot of the website is about 5-10 years old (by cursory review). Their rank is 937,193 worldwide 654,262 USSkeptical Science is 101,300 worldwide and 45,747 US with more than twice as many incoming links.
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Dikran Marsupial at 05:00 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
@chris, I am also essentially an experimentalist, and your set of steps is also appropriate. There are some that seem to come up with theories first by finding out something about A and then realising that this will have a consequence about B. I suppose it is a bit like the difference between a while loop and a do-while loop in programming; there is a loop there, but there is more than one way of expressing it! ;o) -
elsa at 04:59 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Chris, sorry but I don't think I am playing semantic games. The point goes to the very heart of the "scientific" method adopted by too many people, be they AGW supporters or economists. And yes KR I have read a little about Arrhenius. But what you describe is a relationship that is not stage (i) in Dikran's scheme, but rather the predictions from stage (i) not stage (i) itself. These were developed from a theory of the ice ages that is now generally accepted as having been wrong. It also (as with most climate predictions) does not come up with a straightforward relationship between CO2 and temperature but a relationship between the change in CO2 and the change in temperature. Quite why that is I am never sure. -
CBDunkerson at 04:54 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
dorlomin, subsequent stories have reported that Bob Carter has confirmed he is being paid by Heartland and that James Taylor (of Heartland) responded to questions about the curriculum program by writing; "We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”." That thus indicates there are at least two things contained in the documents which were not previously known and have now been confirmed to be accurate. What do you suppose the odds would be for two completely fabricated 'revelations' to turn out to actually be true? -
Dikran Marsupial at 04:50 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Elsa wrote "But we cannot take step (i) in your process. We have no starting point for the relationship between eg CO2 and temperature other than the ones we derive from step (iv)" I'm sorry, but that is complete nonsense. The basic ideas go back at least as far as Fourier's paper of 1824, which is rather before anything much in the way of observational data were available, and influenced by the experimental work of de Saussure (1740-99). The basic quantative details were worked out in the 1950s by Gilbert Plass. If you think AGW is a new theory then you are very much mistaken. I suggest you fill some gaps in your background knowledge, before you issue criticisms. For the history, I would recommend Spencer Wearts excellent The Discovery of Global Warming, and/or the book "The Warming Papers" by Archer and Pierrehumbert, which colllects together some of the foundational papers (including Fouriers). This will give you an idea of how the theory has developed over the last couple of centuries, and hopefully puts your concerns to rest at least somewhat. -
actually thoughtful at 04:50 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Phila, I take your point, but I certainly don't need you lecturing me on ethics. I raised legitimate issues that most of us were already considering and processing. I for one think the conversation is healthy, and prepares us for what is, for the short term at least, a political battle, and one that will be fought on perceptions as much as reality. If reality were the only issue - there would be no climate change "controversy". Don't undertake a circular firing squad rather than look at the issue and understand what the differences are, and where the similarities are. A small acknowledgement that yes, the whistle blown documents were taken against the will of the document owner (and then a smooth follow on tying it to the Vietnam war as you did) is much more powerful than sputtering that the this was done for the "good of mankind". Sadly, that will sound very familiar, as that is the self-serving malarkey offered by the deniers to cover stealing documents and cherry picking the contents. This whole episode confirms something that I formerly thought was a bit on the cynical side. Everything the deniers accuse of us doing has been merely projection for the exact things they are doing. If this gets even 1/2 the attention of climategate it will make a huge advance in the public's understanding of what is happening. -
Bob Lacatena at 04:47 AM on 16 February 2012The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
36, Lambert,...upon which no one will comment fearing it will diminish Hansen's credibility.
What is this supposed to mean? Do you hear black helicopters overhead whenever you think it? Read the comments policy, and obey it. -
Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
A followup on my previous post: Arhenius 1896 is fascinating reading, including predictions (pg. 265) of polar amplification, higher warming for land than ocean, higher warming for Northern Hemisphere than Southern (due to land/water ratios), reduction in diurnal (night/day) temperature differences, and secondary feedback from ice/snow retreat and albedo differences. I suspect the only reason he did not discuss cooling of the stratosphere was that nobody had discovered it (the stratosphere) yet. Arrhenius, who as I recall built on Fourier and Tyndall's work, was a very intelligent man. -
elsa at 04:37 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
chris and CBD sorry about the timing of posts which is to do with the need to log out if one's view of the blog is to be updated. -
Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa - "But we cannot take step (i) [formulating an theory] in your process. We have no starting point for the relationship between eg CO2 and temperature other than the ones we derive from step (iv) [refine or abandon theory according to comparison]" That would be, to put it mildly, incorrect. I would refer you to Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, who derived greenhouse gas heating (and the potential for climate change) straight from spectroscopy and atmospheric composition. The Discovery of Global Warming, which I believe you have been directed to before, is a good resource to learn more about the basic science. Arrhenius is quite accessible, and in particular gave projections: stating that: "...to get a new increase of this order of magnitude (3-4C), it will be necessary to alter the quantity of carbonic acid till it reaches a value nearly midway between 2 and 2.5.... ...temperature of the Arctic regions would rise about 8 degrees or 9 degrees Celsius, if the carbonic acid increased 2.5 to 3 times its present value. In order to get the temperature of the ice age between the 40th and 50th parallels, the carbonic acid in the air should sink to 0.62 to 0.55 of present value (lowering the temperature 4 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius)." This includes estimates of climate sensitivity and polar amplification, both derived and discussed on theoretic grounds back in (as noted) 1896. And understand that this was prior to any discernable anthropogenic climate change (given instrumentation and data available) having occurred... Your statements here are incredibly uninformed and incorrect assertions - I strongly suggest you do some reading. -
elsa at 04:35 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
CBDunkerson: Perhaps you can explain then how you would take step (i) without using (iv). From where would you derive a relationship between eg CO2 and temperature without actually carrying out (iv)? -
chris at 04:33 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
ah..you posted as I was posting elsa. My post is in response to your #36 (New Cross to Queens Park) -
Phila at 04:29 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
...adding, that the problem with groups like Heartland is that they exploit the structures and values of civil society in order to dismantle civil society, just as anti-democratic groups rely on the values of pluralism and tolerance to advance an anti-democratic agenda. In both cases, the goal is to climb the ladder of democracy and free speech and then pull it up. As such, Heartland's activities aren't just dangerous to the environment; they're dangerous to the entire philosophical framework on which actually thoughtful bases his objections to "stealing." This self-canceling aspect of democracy, and the need for extralegal steps to preserve the law, has worried philosophers from Carl Schmitt to Jacques Derrida to Giorgio Agamben. I don't think we're going to settle that debate here, but I will say that I'd prefer to have illegal law-preserving steps taken by private citizens than by governments, for the simple reason that they can bring about needed change without making law itself seem totally arbitrary. Of course, it would be preferable to have transparency and other legal rules that limit the power of groups like Heartland. But unfortunately, the more groups like Heartland make such rules necessary, the more power they have to prevent them from being enacted or enforced. It'd be great if things never got to that point. Unfortunately, they have, which leaves us with a range of options running from worst to least bad. As I see it, an objection to leaks in this climate actually undermines the moral standards it attempts to invoke. Like it or not, this is one of the ways societies advance. In some cases, it may be the only way they advance. Or at least, the only nonviolent way. -
chris at 04:29 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
That's silly elsa - you're playing semantic games. AGW is inherently testable since it's straightforward to compare observations/measurements with theory. We can take a vast amount of information on all of the contributions to the earth's energy balance (solar, volcanic, aerosolic, black carbon, greenhouse gas from CO2, methane, nitrous oxides, tropospheric ozone and so on) and define attributions to (say) 20th century and contemporary warming. Either the observations are consistent with the (theoretical) attributions or they aren't. It turns out that observations are entirely consisitent with a dominant contribution from anthropogenic greenhouse forcing. Without this contribution, there should have been no significant warming during the 20th century. Actually, I would modify Dikran's description of how science "works" (perhaps because I'm fundamentally an experimentalist!). I'd say it's: (i) perform experiments/observations (ii) formulate a theory (iii) devise and perform experiments/observations to test the theory (iv) compare results with predictions... (v) refine or abandon theory... (vi) repeat steps (iii-(vi) (i.e. I'm not sure how one conjures theories out of thin air in the absence of observations - 'though that may be due to my deficiencies as an experimentalist!). -
elsa at 04:28 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
CBDunkerson: while I can understand a relationship between two variables might be statistically significant I do not see how you could make the statement that the trend in temperature is so. Your view seems to me much more like what Karl Popper called historicism, an apparent ability to forecast certain "inevitable" trends. As he put it for historicists "the way is not only long, but winding, leading up and down, right and left." As a result pretty much every set of circumstances will fit with the theory. A prolonged period without warming, or even some decline, must be just part of the "noise" or the road leading up and down, a deviation from an inevitably warmer destiny. -
dorlomin at 04:28 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
How sure are people that this is real? Seems real but still little to confirm it. -
CBDunkerson at 04:16 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa wrote: "But we cannot take step (i) in your process." Well, this explains why 'skeptics' don't have any alternative explanation fitting the observed facts... they are actually incapable of formulating new theories. Who knew? Martin, you're forgiven. :] -
EliRabett at 04:03 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
One possible wedge is Indur, who is a DOE employee. Has he declared this payment on his COI forms? -
Daniel Bailey at 04:03 AM on 16 February 2012A prelude to the Arctic melting season
January 2012 (GISS) is out. Gives an idea as to why the ice is in such a sorry state:
[Source]
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elsa at 04:02 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Dikran. You say the way science works is: (i) formulating an theory (ii) perform experiment/observations (iii) compare results with prediction from theory (iv) refine or abandon theory according to comparison (v) repeat steps (ii)-(v) But we cannot take step (i) in your process. We have no starting point for the relationship between eg CO2 and temperature other than the ones we derive from step (iv)and those are completely mixed up with the other factors that influence temperature. All we can do is use (iv) as a starting point, which really amounts to assuming that the theory is correct and adjusting the other factors to make it work where it doesn't. Using such a technique does not make the AGW theory wrong, but it does render it untestable in any meaningful way. -
Martin at 03:49 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
CBDunkerson#30 Sorry, I didn't find the post on 'Sun upside down' the first time a looked because I included the quotation marks. Silly me. -
Martin at 03:41 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
muoncounter#31 I think you should have a look at Kirkby's presentation on youtube. Kirkby doesn't claim that cosmic rays lead to increases in cloud cover. He is quite candid that the current research on the correlation between the two is inconclusive. Although, he does believe that it is quite possible that CRs might possibly affect certain types of clouds in certain parts of the atmosphere. He states quite clearly that he hasn't yet shown how cloud condensation nuclei are created. That is next on his list of todos. He does claim that because UV is neglected as an input in climate models, the sign for solar irradiance forcing is wrong. If you would like to think of Kirkby as a sceptic it might be more because of what he thinks is poorly understood - how aerosols influence cloud formation - and that he thinks this might have a large effect (comparable to CO2) on the global temperature. He is careful not to make any unsubstantiated claims. He does point out to quite a bit of research which he believes has the potential of significantly changing our assessment of the effect the sun has on climate. In short Kirkby does not believe that the "science is settled" and he hopes to be able to make a significant contribution in the near future. I haven't found anything concerning the UV light and an inversion of the sign for solar irradiance forcing on this site. -
andylee at 03:40 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Excellent article at the Huffington Post about the "Heartless" Institute. -
jimb at 03:30 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
@31 and 32- thanks- the article by Jeffrey Pierce at Real Climate was particularly helpful-a balanced response that was still supportive of the research being done with CLOUD at CERN. -
Dikran Marsupial at 03:17 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
CLOUD is also a good rebuttal of the argument that skeptics can't get funding for their research. It is a *big* project by anybody's standard. CLOUD obviously made a good scientific case for their project, however if all projects ended up confirming their experimental hypothesis it would be an indication that there is something very wrong with the funding mechansim. I'd be very surprised if CLOUD provides a genuinely useful basis for climate skepticism, rather than "just" a useful incremental advance in our understanding of cloud nucleation, but it would be a surprise I would definitely welcome! -
Phila at 03:15 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
AT, realize the first line of defense from the deniers will be "what happened to your pious, sanctimonious drivel about stolen documents". So what? If they didn't use that defense, they'd use another, equally obnoxious and aggressive one. That's what they do. Arguably, that's all they do. The defense, obviously, is that it wasn't "pious, sanctimonious drivel." It was legitimate anger at the use of stolen emails to advance a false argument, demonize honest people and enrich a redundantly wealthy industry. Also, given the accusations Heartland routinely makes against people like me -- which include genocide -- sanctimony barely registers. This is a moment that we will learn something about ourselves (and indeed at the current ratio of 17:1 we now know). Someone who can't or won't acknowledge the difference between leaked documents that reveal a fully conscious campaign of deceit -- one that targets schoolchildren, for God's sake -- and a bunch of stolen emails that reveal no such thing is not someone I want advising me on ethics, thanks. Rationalizing that this is for the good of humanity (which I happen to agree with) makes us feel better. Yes, as it should. Because as you yourself acknowledge, it actually is for the good of humanity. Which is why it is not, in fact, a rationalization but a justification. At a minimum, it would behoove us to acknowledge we are ceding that portion of the high ground. Self awareness is a valuable asset. The moral high ground here is a) not lying about climate science; and b) putting the planet and humanity before the corporate bottom line. No one here has ceded either position. Rather, these positions have informed their reaction to this leak, just as one would expect and want them to. What would you prefer us to do? Pretend this material doesn't exist? Refuse to use it as evidence? Begin every discussion of it with some anodyne disclaimer to the effect that "stealing is wrong, but...." What is the practical outcome you'd like to see? Had the stolen CRU emails actually supported the denialists' allegations of a global conspiracy to falsify evidence, the same points I'm making here would apply. But they didn't, and the people who stole them and misrepresented their content knew they didn't. Do you also feel that the antiwar movement ceded the moral high ground by supporting Daniel Ellsberg's "theft" of the Pentagon Papers? Or by using information obtained from them for political purposes? Is it ever morally acceptable to "steal" information, in your view, or do property rights always trump human life (or at least counterbalance it)? as the core issue is that these documents were obtained against the will of the document owners Yep. And climate science has been rendered "controversial" in classrooms against the will of teachers and administrators. For years, and for money. An ethics that draws no real distinction between these wrongs is not a useful, realistic or "actually thoughtful" one, in my view. Ultimately, the conflict here isn't between ethical and unethical behavior; it's between obedience to law and obedience to justice (as it usually is in whistleblowing cases). If Heartland has a legal case, they can take legal action. Presumably, that's a risk the leaker consciously chose to take. Whether that should or will happen is a completely separate issue from whether the leaked information should be used here in defense of science. Obviously, it should. Failing to do so would be immoral. -
muoncounter at 03:11 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Martin#25: "he is wrong because ..." If the past is a guide, whatever Dr. Kirkby publishes will be immediately embraced by the 'anything but CO2' crowd. The cosmic ray threads here and here are excellent rebuttals to the entire idea of a cosmic ray-climate connection, but I'm sure we'll need to go through that all over again. If you don't like any of our threads, here's another excellent summary. The single largest hole in the connection is the Laschamp geomagnetic minimum, a time of high cosmic ray flux at the surface with no change in climate. Other reasons he is wrong are in RC's discussion of the difficulties inherent in the cloud nucleation model. -
Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
andylee - I suppose I was thinking about something on the level of Watt's surfacestations website - which is slightly above blog level. That shouldn't cost much. If you're doing a more interactive website, dealing with databases, transactions, or money, costs will be much higher. And if you need 24/7 access, or have loads that require multiple servers, etc. But I can't forsee anything from Watts and company that would hit that level. -
andylee at 02:55 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
KR, $88k for a decent website is significant, but not an "awful lot". It depends on how many man-years would be involved. The last site I worked on as CTO (and took over) took $1.5m to build, required a team of 20 programmers in 4 countries with multiple redundant servers etc. However, no amount of money would entice me to build a site that compromised my values. -
Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
As of this morning I see 32 articles on Google News, including one from Forbes. -
Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Primus - I believe most people realized what groups like Heartland were up to, and now there's proof. I think this may be a very significant story. I think I would tend to agree with some of the speculation here - that Idso (as a fairly minor public figure) may be acting as a distribution hub, that Singer isn't giving Heartland much bang for the buck. And that $88k to Anthony Watts is an awful lot for setting up a website! Hmmm... The person referred to in the documents as "The Anonymous Donor" is fascinating: roughly $15M US given by a single donor to lobby against acting on climate change?!? I wonder who that is. Secundus - I'm greatly encouraged by the discussion here, with actual consideration of the ethics of disclosures. I somehow don't recall anyone in the 'skeptic' groups being upset over email hacking. Moral high ground, anyone? That said - whistleblowing is a time-honored tradition when a person of ethics feels that an entity (company, government, etc) is acting in an illegal or immoral fashion. -
CBDunkerson at 02:37 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Martin & jimb, I haven't watched the video but the descriptions sound like things which have been covered here many times before. Use the search box at the upper left to find articles on 'Kirkby', 'Cosmic Rays', 'CERN', and/or 'sun upside down' to find discussions of these issues. -
andylee at 02:30 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Anyone that threatens everyone's futures by corrupting the truth for the sake of selfish short-term gain is as unscrupulous and as low as a spammer in my opinion. I hope this will get as much media coverage as "Climategate" did, expose the nastiness and make Denialism as socially unacceptable and unfashionable as drink driving. I'm sure we would all like to know who is this anonymous donor, and their motives, because it certainly isn't about truth. -
jimb at 02:25 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
re my post @17, I'm with Martin @25in hoping that someone here can add some analysis that I am not capable of doing. I would also note that in the presentation Dr. Kirkby said that there was a paper in the works and that there was further discussion of the implications coming. So far I have found no reference here to that paper-I expect it may be still going through the peer review process. -
Dikran Marsupial at 01:52 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Sorry elsa, there is no inconsistency, but instead an aspects of climate and climate modelling that you are unaware of. Please read the paper by Easterling and Wehner (2009) which show that similar periods of little or no warming ocurr now and then in both the observational data and in model output. If you understand the difference between forced and unforced climate you will understand that the observation of a decade or to with little or no warming is completely consistent with prolonged warming (the acceleration will not be very evident on a decadal basis due to the noise involved). The idea that AGW theory is not falsifiable is obviously incorrect. For instance if the climate were to cool for the next fifty years, in the absence of changes in the forcings, that is something that is impossible according to the models and the theory and hence would falsify both. AGW theory hasn't been falsified yet, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be falsified. "Now you could well be right [sulphate aerosols being responsible for 1940-70 trend] that this is the explanation but once you have added the extra variables you have a theory that will be right whatever happens and thus loses its claim to be properly scientific." This is simply nonsense. The way science works is by (i) formulating an theory (ii) perform experiment/observations (iii) compare results with prediction from theory (iv) refine or abandon theory according to comparison (v) repeat steps (ii)-(v) There has been much work done on understanding the physics of atmospheric aerosols, they weren't added to the models as a post-hoc fix without justification. There is a good reason that the 1940-1970 trend is not taken as a repudiation of the theory, which is because it is compatible with the theory. If you want an example of a claim being not properly scientific, then just look at claims that climate change is due to climate cycles. How many of them have made a falsifiable prediction based on a physical (rather then phenomonological) model. I think you will find the answer is approximately zero. -
catamon at 01:43 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Well, that's hit the papers here in Oz! http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientist-accepts-cash-for-climate-20120215-1t7ho.html Oh, and since John Brookes asked: http://www.ipa.org.au/people/bob-carter -
elsa at 01:27 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Dikran: as I hope I make clear above my main point here was that there is an inconsistency between the graph presented above and many of the temperature measures for the last decade (as you yourself have accepted on the other blog as far as surface temperature is concerned). I would not argue the last decade is particularly significant, although it is difficult to square it with the view that the world faces accelerating warming. Equally I would not see any great significance in the temperature trends of the last century or so. The world is a bit warmer but whether that is a lasting feature is not something you or I can know with any certainty, still less whether it has been caused by humans and CO2. You state that your hypothesis should always be what you want to disprove. I think we would agree therefore that to have a truly scientific hypothesis there should exist circumstances which would be capable of proving the theory wrong. But in the case of the AGW theory this is not the case. The world cooled in the period 1940 to 1970 or so (a 30 year period which you seem to regard as a significant timespan) while CO2 concentrations rose. But this is not taken as repudiating the theory, which is rescued by "a highly likely ...identifiable change in the forcing". Now you could well be right that this is the explanation but once you have added the extra variables you have a theory that will be right whatever happens and thus loses its claim to be properly scientific. -
Dennis at 01:27 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
I was out of the loop a lot yesteday so I just learned this news now. I haven't had a chance to read all the comments on this and hope I'm not repeating something here. There's a critical element to the clamor about the publicly-funded scientists' emails being made public (Climategate, Cucinelli's witchhunt, etc.) and this event that needs to be addressed. It's one thing to engage in junk science (e.g., NIPCC) at the behest of your anonymous donors, but to start a well-funded campaign that deliberately intends to change public education is an invitation to public sctrutiny at the same level of the work of public officials. A good example of this in these documents is, buried in the budget (p.20) is a tie in with ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- a secretive organization funded by private corporations that, among other things, writes "model legislation" that is typically introduced verbatim by friendly legislators in U.S. state legislatures to engage in such "reforms" as privatizing public schools and prisons (guess who gets paid to operate them?), among many other proposals that have the direct effect of increasing corporate revenues. One Florida legislator recently introduced an ALEC bill and forgot to remove the reference that it was written by ALEC in the text. Ooops. If word really got out, Americans would be shocked to learn that corporations -- not the people they elect -- are actually writing their laws. The New York Times recently ran an editorial on ALEC's activities, but the group still operates largely under the radar. You can learn more about ALEC here: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed There is so much in these documents that demonstates that Heartland is not about science but rather corporate influence. I challenge any deniers who attack individual climate scientists as "leftist" or "environmentalists" with an "agenda" to explain how the relationship between Heartland, its paid consultants, and groups like ALEC should not also make Heartland's work suspect. -
CBDunkerson at 01:12 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
elsa wrote: "The escalator starting at a convenient point in time" Again, this is nonsense. Pick any starting point in the thermometer temperature record that you like... it changes nothing. 1940? Guess what, the total trend is upwards. 1910? Upward trend there too. 1880? Same thing. The only way you can get a 'non warming' trend up to the present is to pick a starting point so recent that the result is statistically meaningless. Every statistically significant trend up to present shows warming. All of them. What could possibly possess you to keep making such a patently ridiculous claim? -
Martin at 01:08 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Listened to Jasper Kirkby's talk (given 9 months ago). Very interesting, that bit about the effects of the sun's UV light. I find it rather frustrating that my limited understanding of climate science does not allow me to comment in a meaningful way, i.e. "He is right because ... or he is wrong because ...". Perhaps the climate experts at skepticalscience can help me out and post a comment or something? Cheers, Martin
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