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actually thoughtful at 07:02 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Yahoo/live Science has a piece up that focuses on the false dichotomy. For example they talk about the curriculum, but fail to mention the goal is to distract from talking about science. They are trying to soft pedal it. -
scaddenp at 06:56 AM on 16 February 2012Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Emilio - I would assume this is Paltridge's long-debunked inference from the NCEP reanalysis. In the paper itself it was noted: "It is of course possible that the observed humidity trends from the NCEP data are simply the result of problems with the instrumentation and operation of the global radiosonde network from which the data are derived." though I doubt climate4you would be pointing that out. Since the NCEP reanalysis had known flaws and was in disagreement with practically every other measurement, this was a drawing a long bow, but then in denial-land, nothing like that gets replaced. It is contradicted by later reanalysis products. I think you can find better graph in AR4. -
actually thoughtful at 06:10 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Heartland 2012 Climate Strategies: "Expanded climate communications Heartland plays an important role in climate communications, especially through our in-house experts (e.g., Taylor) through his Forbes blog and related high profile outlets, our conferences, and through coordination with external networks (such as WUWT and other groups capable of rapidly mobilizing responses to new scientific findings, news stories, or unfavorable blog posts)." Wow. Of particular note is "mobilizing responses to new scientific findings". This is amazing information. (Amazing that it is exactly what one thinks must be going on, but can't in good conscience conceive of actually going on). -
Phila at 06:04 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
AT, I am giving up. In order to find common ground you have to want to have a discussion rather than stick to lecture mode. Disagreeing with you on certain important points does not constitute an unwillingness to have a discussion. Furthermore, statements like "valid points of view exist that are not your own" provide as good an example of the "lecture mode" as anything I've said here, if not better. Whether they also represent a greater avoidance of actual debate, I'll leave it for other readers to decide. So yes, by all means, let's give up...if not for our own sake, then for everyone else's. -
actually thoughtful at 06:02 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
I just got through to desmogblog -slow, but still there. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:01 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Phila... Well, you can say one thing about Idso. He's very effective at negotiating his compensation. Can't say the same for Bob Carter. -
andylee at 06:00 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Sapient@93, yes, I was surprised too at the Register's positive stance, perhaps they are coming out from the cold? (I noticed you used my 1GW/45000 years observation, for which I gave you +1 :-)) -
Emilio at 05:59 AM on 16 February 2012Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
If the temperature increases, the amount of water vapor should also increase (Clausius-Clapeyron law). Some graphs, however, seem to show that the humidity is decreasing http://www.climate4you.com/GreenhouseGasses.htm Could someone explain. Thanks in advance. -
Phila at 05:57 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Philippe, considering the quality (cough!) and the influence of Idso's miserable pile of nonsense, 6 figures is way overpaid. That's what really gets to me about this stuff. It's such a waste! If these people invested in, say, cleantech, they could earn valuable patents and popular and political goodwill, and provide a dramatic demonstration of the free-market principles they claim to cherish. People would probably be a lot less likely to begrudge them tax breaks, at that point. Or protest them. But jeez...giving all that money to Idso? As you say, he's not even any good at what he does. Seems to me they'd earn a better return on his annual income by taking it to Vegas and pumping it into the slots. -
actually thoughtful at 05:55 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Phila: "So in the interest of finding common ground, I'll just point out that the view you define here as "self-serving malarkey" seems to be the very same view you espoused upthread when you agreed that the leak is potentially good for humanity." You have an interesting way of finding common ground. I am giving up. In order to find common ground you have to want to have a discussion rather than stick to lecture mode. Valid points of view exist that are not your own. I hope folks made copies of those documents. I haven't been able to get to www.desmogblog for the last hour or so. AS others have noted, hopefully that means this is "going viral". -
Alexandre at 05:50 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Desmogblog still down, now with this message: "Desmog Blog is currently running scheduled maintenance. We should be back shortly. Thank you for your patience." A scheduled maintenance today seems a very unlikely coincidence, if you ask me. -
JohnMashey at 05:49 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
People might save themselves some time if they read the first 21 pages of Fake science, fakexperts, funny finances, free of tax. 1) The documents sure look real, they mesh perfectly with what I'd seen in 5 months' detailed study and much of that is documented in the massive appendices. The only one that even has the slightest possibility of fakery is the strategy doc, but it is certainly quite consistent also. The K-12 project seems an outgrowth of the education efforts documented in Fakery. 2) I have alleged that Heartland has been seriously breaking IRS tax law, specifically various provisions of 501(c)(3) public charity rules. Free speech lets people lie, but if you do it too much as a charity, you can have that status revoked, have to pay back taxes. Ignore the climate side: all their efforts on behalf of tobacco violate 501(c)(3). 3) Likewise, the US IRS frowns on a charity sending money abroad to non-charities ... and Heartland did that, certainly to CA and NZ, and almost certainly to Oz. -
Trent1492 at 05:47 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
Anyone want to bet that we are shortly going to see a another batch of hacked e-mails from Hadley CRU released as a distraction? -
Phila at 05:44 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
AT< I certainly don't need you lecturing me on ethics. Emotional conjugation at its finest: I raise legitimate issues, she counsels, you lecture. Being as you're recommending self-awareness, perhaps you should consider the possibility that your initial post itself constituted a "lecture on ethics." I'm honestly not trying to be snarky or nasty here; I think this is a reasonable request. 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. I can see how it might sound familiar...provided you obdurately persist in ignoring the fact that one was a lie, and one wasn't. That the evidence supported one position, and not the other. And that virtually no one involved in slandering these scientists has ever issued a correction or an apology, even after they'd been exonerated by multiple inquiries. But yeah, other than that minor detail of totally unrepentant cherrypicking and misrepresentation and slander in service of an incoherent conspiracy theory for which no actual evidence has ever existed anywhere...it's pretty much the exact same thing. We seem to be on the same side, ultimately, and I wouldn't want to turn this thread into an argument with you even in the unlikely event that the moderators would allow it. So in the interest of finding common ground, I'll just point out that the view you define here as "self-serving malarkey" seems to be the very same view you espoused upthread when you agreed that the leak is potentially good for humanity. This suggests to me that you can, in fact, distinguish between leaking a Heartland document and stealing CRU's emails....even before the issue of representing the contents fairly arises. As for whether this actually was "done for the good of mankind," I don't think we know that yet. The leaker could simply have been angry at someone, for all I know. Regardless, as you note, it has the potential to "make a huge advance in the public's understanding of what is happening." And as you also note, that seems likely to be good for humanity. So it seems like we agree on the important points. A small acknowledgement that yes, the whistle blown documents were taken against the will of the document owner I think the word "leaked" provides precisely that acknowledgment. Even if it doesn't, have you seen any articles so far that don't acknowledge that these docs were released against the owner's will? 'Cause I haven't. I appreciate your acknowledgement that there is a moral issue worth discussing. Weirdly enough, I kind of thought I made that belief clear with my original comment. -
tonydunc at 05:42 AM on 16 February 2012Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
Must say I love reading Elsa's posts. She is quite adept at getting attention and finding some point that she can use as a goad to create responses that she can then use to find another point in order to continue the game. Of course I never see her accepting that anything she thinks could be wrong or admitting that someone has adequately address her objection. I am impressed with the patience of those who engage with her. So I have a question for Elsa. Have you tried pitting your rhetorical skills against the leading theories of climate that do not have CO2 being the main forcing of climate through the increase of anthropogenic CO2? What about the accuracy of their models and predictions based on actual data. How well do their theories explain the paleodata- ice ages, LIA, MWP, and all the various other verifiable changes in climate and global/regional temp. It has been over 30 years since AGW has been mostly accepted as a concern by scientists. And 20 years since there was strong political pressure to deny AGW. Certainly Lindzen, Spencer, Christie, and others have a robust theory with predictions that can be forecast and hindcast and compared to AGW theory. And you can put your same questions to them, and then compare. Please advise of your conclusions regarding the alternate theory and where it is consistent and adequately accounts for all the actual data in every discipline that has data on climate. It shouldn't take very long. -
andylee at 05:39 AM on 16 February 2012Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
I'm sure the site will be struggling to deal with the world's attention focussing on it right now. (AKA 'Slashdotted') They could have anticipated a 1000x increase in traffic and arranged for mirrors or extra servers to cope, but it is also conceivable that the Denialati have mobilised a DDOS too. Standard practice would be to release the docs as a torrent, making it extremely difficult to suppress. News is spreading quickly as various organizations are picking it up. -
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.
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