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Comments 103951 to 104000:

  1. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Nice work Robert - been waiting for a definitive context in which to consider Wu et.al. Thanks for that. (It never turned up in my email though).
  2. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:01 PM on 19 November 2010
    The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    @ScaredAmoeba To those who say that really this was not Climategate, I recommend especially the comments on cited by You article Nature News, 15 November 2010; Climate: The hottest year ... and Jones paper: An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970, Nature, 2010. One of the conclusions is as follows: “Here we show that the hemispheric differences in temperature trends in the middle of the twentieth century stem largely from a rapid drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperatures of about 0.3°C between about 1968 and 1972. The timescale of the drop is shorter than that associated with either tropospheric aerosol loadings or previous characterizations of oscillatory multidecadal variability.” If the affair - scandals, was not, how this work and this conclusions?
  3. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Nature has reported on the CRU hack. "....More certain is the conclusion that the hack of the server was a sophisticated attack. Although the police and the university say only that the investigation is continuing, Nature understands that evidence has emerged effectively ruling out a leak from inside the CRU, as some have claimed. And other climate-research organizations are believed to have told police that their systems survived hack attempts at the same time...." So all the wild speculation about an 'inside-job' or 'whistle-blower' is just spin. It was most likely a co-ordinated attack, almost certainly funded by those wealthy organisations who have most to lose from a public acceptance of the reality of climate change. And it won't be too hard to work-out who the most likely suspects are likely to be. H/T to Peter Sinclair.
  4. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    actually thoughtfull - Well the Conservative party in the UK is definitely greener, but they have the problem of having to appease the traditional ideologists in the party. So instead of green 'localism' in order to reduce carbon footprints, we have Conservative 'localism' which is a re-packaging of the ideology of smaller government. The Coalition government seem to be doing OK on the issue of energy, but other issues are of concern, eg. selling forests, changing tree protection legislation etc. But if you analyse the path, it makes logical sense from their POV. Energy creates new businesses, publicly owned forests cost the tax payer.
  5. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    RSVP: "it's hard to imagine someone "from the outside" would know what they were looking for." there are common tools for searching through large volumes of text for keywords. anyone with enough knowledge to hack a server will also be aware of them. that's certainly the impression i got, considering the zip file contained more than a thousand emails, of which only a handful ever attracted the slightest interest. the vast majority of them were the sort of boring work emails everyone here must see a dozen times a day. if they *were* manually triaged, whoever did it wasn't very selective, to say the least. perhaps more to the point, hacking a third party server to distribute "leaked" documents doesn't sound much like the actions of an honest but disgruntled scientist who just wants the truth to be known.
  6. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    Poptech. How about the appalling anti-engineering and anti-science information on your web site? How can you criticise others without cleaning up your own back yard?
    Moderator Response: Please, everybody -- there have been discussions of Poptech's list of papers in many previous threads. That subject is off-topic here.
     
    Second try: Apparently some people aren't getting the message. No more discussion in this thread from any side of Poptech's list of papers, please.
  7. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Here's some information from the Phillip Morris documents (good to have it recorded somewhere). In 1992, a presentation focused on efforts in the ETS domain. As noted above, Seitz was involved in one of these efforts: "Late 1st quarter/early 2nd quarter Procedural Options for Addressing the Scientific Issue Highlighted in Global Warming and Ozone Hole Controversies, Dr Frederick Seitz of the George C Marshall Institute. 40–60 regulators—Ensure credible science TASSC" Seitz Symposium And the GMI document wasn't released to the public until 1994. Indicates that GMI were involved in behind the scenes attempts to challenge moves to regulate ETS, with Seitz as a major player. Seitz has a loooooong history of advocating for tobacco companies.
    Moderator Response: A reminder to everyone commenting here -- the past three pages include many, many comments about Seitz and tobacco. For the rest of this discussion, before posting further remarks on that subject, please think twice (or three times) about whether anything new is being added. Or put it another way, many many posts on this thread have been deleted as the discussion was going around in circles, with nothing new being contributed.
  8. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    I attended the Melbourne talk by Naomi Oreskes. She made the point that the MODs were motivated by strong free-market ideologies. Some of the questions after the presentation attempted to explore this further (but Naomi -understandably because it was off-topic - would not be drawn). It got me thinking, does someone who wants the government to regulate polluters, and limit resource wastage, have to be anti free-market (you may want to read that as socialist). To put this another way, should you be allowed to drive a Hummer as long as you pay for the priveledge ie pay a lot.
  9. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Why is an external fishing expedition with the intent of finding something to spin so hard to picture? It wasn't a precise operation. How many emails were stolen to quotemine those few sliced & diced tidbits?
  10. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Rob Honeycutt #36 At the end of the day, the leak, hack, or whatever, may have been someone's desire to provide certainty on a different level. Philippe Chantreau #40 Yes, the word whistleblower is overcharged in many respects, but it's hard to imagine someone "from the outside" would know what they were looking for. The other option is "disgruntled".
  11. Philippe Chantreau at 18:55 PM on 19 November 2010
    The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    The harassment through FOI requests is an invention of Steve McIntyre who has encouraged his readers to outsource them from anywhere they could (so as to give the appearance of being genuine). The intent was to send a barrage of them to the scientists whose work he dislikes. It is a disgusting perversion of what FOIs were intended to be.
  12. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Poptech, No Poptech, you are actually the one arguing strawmen. To my knowledge Seitz was not directly affiliated with CTR, but I have not read the many thousands of confidential documents. Either way I did not say he was affiliated with CTR-- although upon reading my posts again, I can see why you might think that is what I was driving at. That was not the point of my posting about the CTR. Odd that it does not bother your conscience that the same company who paid Seitz was involved with forming and funding the CTR for decades. The purpose of the programs which Seitz was paid by Reynolds to oversee and evaluate were part and parcel of their misinformation campaign, and their attempt to create the air of confusion and detract from the negative impacts of smoking. Seitz has admitted that "They [Reynolds] didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking". So he knew that they were trying to hide the truth about the negative impacts of smoking and trying to blame/pin the negative health impacts of smoking on "genetics" or "degenerative diseases"--so blame anything but smoke. Kinda like "skeptics" trying to blame the warming on anything but CO2. He made the choice to be paid by Reynolds, knowing full well about the tobacco companie's strategy (in concert with other tobacco companies) to delay action being taken on smoking. You have been presented the facts by several people here, and choose to ignore them. Sorry, but I can't help you with that. I'm done wasting my time on you.
  13. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    All, This silliness has gone on for way too long. The contrarian has latched on to one point, and is using it to dismiss all other arguments and evidence against Seitz. They are clearly not open to reason. For example, they accuse another poster of being deceptive. The contrarian picks this quote from the Stokes memo "R.J. Reynolds Industries takes no part in the creation or performance of any research" to support their assertion. That would be highly misleading, both on the part of Reynolds and on the part of the contrarian. Reynolds may not have done the research in house, but they certainly gave a lot of money to front groups like the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) to do the "research". Stokes says in the same memo being discussed above: "Back in 1954, Reynolds joined to help form the Tobacco Industry Research Committee -- a group made up of tobacco manufacturers, growers and warehousemen to look into questions of tobacco use and health . The organization's name was changed in the early sixties to the Council for Tobacco Research -- U-S-A" Indeed, CTR was founded by tobacco executives at an emergency meeting in 1954. Despite what the tobacco companies claimed outwardly, a memo by Panzer in 1972 betrayed the CTR's true agenda, "the CTR actually worked at "promoting cigarettes and protecting them from these and other attacks," by "creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it, and advocating the public's right to smoke, without actually urging them to take up the practice." United States Judge Hadden Lee Sarokin, who presided over two New Jersey tobacco cases, described TIRC/CTR in 1988 as "nothing but a hoax created for public relations purposes with no intention of seeking the truth or publishing it." CTR's work was described by the Wall Street Journal in 1993 as "the longest-running misinformation campaign in US business history."[Source here] Stokes states again states in the same document that Reynolds provided funds to the CTR: "The Council for Tobacco Research is one of three primary avenues used by Reynolds Industries in funding biomedical research. During the past decade, our company also has become associated with several major research studies on either a joint sponsorship or sole-sponsorship basis." And in the next paragraph: "In evaluating and monitoring the special projects that we fund --particularly the sole-sponsorship programs -- R .J . Reynolds Industries has secured the services of a permanent consultant -- Dr . Frederick Seitz, former president of Rockefeller University. Dr . Seitz is with us today and has agreed to describe these various R-J-R sponsored programs for you." Seitz monitored and evaluated programs funded by big tobacco to misinform, confuse, create doubt and delay action being taken on smoking and tobacco smoke. End of story. And now those in denial about the theory of AGW are using the exact same tactics, and even some of the same players who aided big tobacco in their misinformation campaign are (or were) involved. Oreskes and Conway, and many others have determined this.
  14. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    gallopingcamel: Rejecting FOI requests is fully legal, an inherent part of the FOI act. If prosecution failed, it's not the fault of those that were prosecuted.
  15. actually thoughtful at 15:54 PM on 19 November 2010
    Climategate a year later
    The sad thing is, most casual folks got the gist that the scientists did something bad. They did not get the message that it was all trumped up with no basis in reality. As usual, the bad guys have better marketing than the good guys.
  16. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    Great episode! Interesting that Gareth mentions steady-state economics. CASSE have just released (as of yesterday) a road map for a sustainable economy, 'Enough is Enough', based on ideas generated in a conference held in Leeds this year. There's a bunch of interesting videos of the keynote speeches from the conference on the site too. Would be interested to hear what people think about the idea of a steady state economy.
  17. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    #41: "the failed prosecution of the people who willfully defied requests for information" Yes, we must vigorously pursue the serious offense of FOIA violations: Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act. Why bother with such trifles as the criminal penalties for computer hacking? penalties for the offence of attempting to gain unauthorised access to a computer being increased from a maximum sentence of six months to two years
  18. actually thoughtful at 15:36 PM on 19 November 2010
    Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn - China is leading in both coal plants and renewables. China is big. This says nothing about the validity of cap and trade as a market based solution to the climate disruption problem.
  19. actually thoughtful at 15:33 PM on 19 November 2010
    Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    The Ville - it used to be that those ugly vent pipes for indoor plumbing were aesthetically unpleasing (and who would put their toilet INSIDE their house?! Eeeeww!) Times and attitudes change. Once we accurately price carbon, all these silly objections will simply disappear (cranks will still make them, but no one will listen). We need to act. My comments have nothing to do with Great Britain, but rather the mindless negativity and defeatism of the post Mike recommended. It looks like Great Britain, as is Germany, is on a path towards sustainability. Those of us in the US can only wish. Our recent elections are moving us backwards at a very high rate of speed.
  20. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Ooops!, "....yet there IS so little conflicting with current knowledge. The paper is full of amazing prescience and insights."
  21. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    @43: Let China fill that void. It seems that they are building more coal fired power plants every day. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11coal.html?_r=1
  22. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Norman - Have you read the intermediate version of this topic? Non-linear does not imply chaotic, although all chaotic systems are non-linear. Weather is highly dependent on initial conditions (you can't predict next July 17th's temperature). Climate, on the other hand, as described in the RealClimate links posted earlier, is a boundary condition issue - when does outgoing energy match incoming energy? Feedback, not incidentally, is a geometric relationship (Forcing / (1 - Feedback Gain)), which is linear. There are certainly non-linear transition points, such as vanishing ice in the Arctic, but it's still not a chaotic system. You've repeated your albedo feedback question, but have not established that there is chaos in long term climate. Unless you do, you have failed to raise an objection.
    Moderator Response: Norman, you should give up your assertion that climate is chaotic, and instead comment on a different thread to focus on what seems to be your real assertion that Climate Models are Unreliable.
  23. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Marcus (#35), You call for criminal prosecution of whoever leaked the CRU emails. Where do you stand on the failed prosecution of the people who willfully defied requests for information under Freedom of Information laws?
  24. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    The results of the Merchants of Doubt-led denial of climate science and global warming? 40 years of news stories on global warming and we're further from action on CO2 emissions than ever. Example, this news article from 1986:
    "Scientists say the Puget Sound region could one day be as balmy as Baja because of the pollution-caused trend in global warming known as the greenhouse effect."
    Even in 1986 CO2 was referred to as pollution. Who'dathunkit? The Yooper
  25. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #38, #40: Norman, It sounds like you are trying to run a climate model without benefit of any computing. That's not particularly helpful, as complicated systems don't simplify so easily. Best left to the pros; we can then read their results and form our own picture with the benefit of educated input. What you describe sounds to me a bit like what happens every year, as we move from summer to winter. That alone is neither a net warming nor cooling. Here's one inconsistency in your scheme: "If the climate cools in the Northern regions (higher albedo from increased snow) like during an ice age but the oceans are still fairly warm (from the previous warm cycle) you may get an increase of cloud formation ... This increased cloud cover acts to cool the Earth more ..." Here's what Holland and Bitz 2003 found: ... clouds reduce the strength of the ice-albedo feedback by shielding the planetary albedo from the surface. Furthermore most models predict Arctic cloud cover increases with warming, which increases the planetary albedo Further, drawing comparisons to glacial stages is too tricky to do on the back of an envelope. Burt et al showed that the increased albedo due to glacial ice is moderated by the accompanying lowered sea level: Although the positive ice-albedo feedback acts to amplify the climate change ... , due to the melting of sea ice and ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, the ice-albedo feedback is actually negative over large regions of the high-latitude Northern Hemisphere, due to changes in the size of the Arctic Ocean basin. Both of those mechanisms do not enhance change, they moderate change: Cloud cover moderates the increased albedo of surface ice; warming air causes clouds which cool. These act to reduce the 'chaotic' nature that you seem to want to find. There are no sharp changes in temperature in this system. What is needed to explain sharply increasing or decreasing temps? Some other agent: We know its not the sun, as TSI is down while temperature is going up. We have a known warming agent in increasing atmospheric GHGs. Insisting that "Clouds alone roughly double Earth's albedo, from 0.15 (no clouds) to 0.31" is possible and should be put into the calculator makes no sense. We do not go from no clouds to heavy clouds. Look at satellite photos; there are always some clouds. Finally "the net affect of increased evaporation rates caused by global warming are difficult to predict" doesn't mean its chaotic. Repetition doesn't make it so.
  26. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    An interesting link: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/sea-level-rise-the-new-york-times-got-the-story/#more-5386
  27. Climategate a year later
    Re: Ken Lambert (36) As a former DoD employee who held a security clearance above the Top Secret level, I'm intimately familiar with non-disclosure agreements (12 years post-DoD, I am still bound by some of them). However, you appear to be operating under the premise that the aforesaid emails were released by a "whistleblower"; i.e., that it was "an inside" job. More evidence exists to the contrary, that it was an outside job, a "hack". As to the content of the emails: I see scientists being human, exchanging information and sharing ideas in a forum presumed to have a limited audience; that said audience would have a background of knowledge allowing a contextual understanding of the information, ideas and emotions being shared between professional colleagues and even friends. That sometime frustrations get voiced (better out than in, I say), frustrations that were understood to be seen in the context of "venting". Who among us have not had bad days? Said and/or written things in the heat of the moment that, had the brain filter been in "ON" mode, they might otherwise thought twice about letting out? I have. You have, Ken. We sometimes do things that we later regret having said or done. We express contrition. We move on. Once upon a time a while ago in a comment to you I was a little emphatic in my wording. I'd had been a long day. Later, having thought about it, I posted a comment apologizing to you for my earlier vehemence. I'm human, make mistakes. You are and do, Ken. We try to learn from them and move on. As Phil Jones is trying to do. As Rajendra Pachauri is as well. That is the lasting takeaway I get from having read the emails. That this is still an issue with some is telling as to preconceptions and mindsets. Conflating uncertainties into a conspiracy is absurd. I hold you and BP to a higher standard than that; you are both capable of much more. The Yooper
  28. Philippe Chantreau at 12:46 PM on 19 November 2010
    The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    The common misconception that some vertuous whistleblower "leaked" e-mails is quite telling of how "skeptics" are poorly informed and how they think of themselves. Any superficial gathering of info quickly reveals that e-mails were hacked, not leaked. But the self righteousness attached to the whistleblower idea sure is comforting, so they hold on to it and foster that misonception in the public. Very revealing.
  29. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Marcus @38, Thanks a bunch!
  30. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    muoncounter, Here is some reading to back up some of my thoughts. Clouds effect on Albedo. Selected quote from the above article link: "Clouds, therefore, are responsible for about 55% of the sunlight that is reflected into space without adding heat to the climate system. Clouds alone roughly double Earth's albedo, from 0.15 (no clouds) to 0.31 (including clouds). In short, clouds are the predominant means by which incoming sunlight is reflected back out into space." Put those albedo changes in the calculator and see what a difference it makes. Another quote that supports my current view that Climate is chaotic: "However, water vapor and clouds play numerous roles in the climate system, and the net affect of increased evaporation rates caused by global warming are difficult to predict" Another article that also talks about the albedo effect. MIT article about Cloud effects. Quote from this article stating how much clouds change Temperature. "Recent observational studies show that these effects almost balance, but that the cooling effect is somewhat more important. From the point of view of global change, however, it is crucial to note that this small difference is about five times larger than the radiative effect anticipated from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and that the individual components of the difference are orders of magnitude larger. In existing climate models about one third of the predicted warming due to increasing CO2 arises because of the predicted cloud changes. These predictions, however, are highly speculative because none of the models include interactive cloud physics" Another quote suggesting the difficult nature in predicting future climate: "Clearly, without a proper treatment of both layer clouds and convection, model predictions of climate are uncertain. Cloud effects are so much larger than the anticipated effects of added greenhouse gases, that small changes in the cloud picture can easily alter predictions of global warming. In addition, existing methods of representing convection and clouds are crude, and, in some cases, can be shown even to be qualitatively incorrect"
  31. Climategate a year later
    Ken, I agree that 'Can you delete any emails ...' is very poor - do you understand the reasons that the originator may have asked for this? I would like for you to explain to us what the meaning of "hide the decline" is, and "it's a travesty". Just a warning: I'm only asking you this because I'm pretty sure that you'll take these comments utterly out of context and claim that they mean something that they do not.
  32. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Robert Way @32 notes that we now have greater ice loss with lower solar irradiance but higher CO2. We know that CO2 in the atmosphere and ice loss in polar regions are both accelerating. Solar activity can not remain quiescent. Pinker (2005) reports increased activity and if that is on-going, would not that explain the reason for both the increase in ice loss and acceleration in the rate of loss, rather than some undefined “natural” warming?
  33. Climategate a year later
    Daniel Bailey #29 All leaking of confidential or private documents could be found to be a crime somewhere. If you are a public servant (or a federal employee in USspeak) then you sign employment documents to maintain confidentiality, take oaths etc etc... Then "whistleblower" leglislation is enacted at some later date to protect you if you find that some malfeasance is happening in your job. This is a fraught matter for your judgement - those who are 'blown' will always cry 'thief' and try to smear the blower. The act of copying documents, leaking internal information is always prima facie illegal - but the leaker might be protected if the malfeasance is proven and the revelation in the public interest. How many scandals have been exposed by prima facie illegal leaking or stealing of documents? My point remains: if there was a boring technical discussion going on in the revealed emails and no jaw droppers like 'hide the decline' and 'its a travesty' and 'Can you delete any emails...', and 'even if we have to redefine what is peer-review' then there would be nothing to talk about. The real deniers in this debate are those who deny that Climategate exposed the leading scientists private doubts about the data and the measurement (and hence the quality of their work) and their attempts to present a 'sexed-up' monolithic quasi-alarmist story to the public.
  34. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Yep, here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics, & a copy of the original memo can be found here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/8/82/GCC_Primer_Draft.pdf It was reported on, in 2009, by the New York Times-but really should have been reported more widely at the time. Not surprisingly, the GCC disbanded in 2002-not long after this document came to light ;)! BTW, another useful quote from the same primer is this: "Lindzen' s hypothesis that any warming would create more rain which would cool and dry the upper troposphere did offer a mechanism for balancing the effect of increased greenhouse gases. However, the data supporting this hypothesis is weak, and even Lindzen has stopped presenting it as an alternative to the conventional model of climate change.
  35. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Cheers, albatross. I also found some other documents which linked Seitz to Phillip Morris' denial efforts in the realm of environmental tobacco smoke. That post also disappeared when poptech's thread went down the memory-hole. It shows they were planning a 'Seitz Symposium' a year or so before the G. Marshall Institute released the 1994 document on global warming (which included comments on ETS and, as noted earlier, a gaggle of free-marketeer bugbears). And, of course, money. Funds from Jim Tozzi's group were passed to GMI (Seitz being a founder). Tozzi's group were funded by Phillip Morris.
  36. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Marcus @35, Wow. Do you have a source for that memo from the GCC? Thanks.
  37. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    To fydijkstra @15.... Who says, " Yes! It has revealed, that the IPCC hides uncertainties..." This was what I would consider stupid work (something I'm quite adept at) but here is what I find. From the IPCC AR4... In WG1 - chapter 1, I find 53 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 2, I find 207 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 3, I find 56 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 3, Supplementary materials, I find 9 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 4, I find 38 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 5, I find 36 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 6, I find 21 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 6, Supplementary materials, I find 0 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 7, I find 81 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 8, I find 60 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 8, Supplementary materials, crashed my browser. In WG1 - chapter 9, I find 295 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 9, Supplementary materials, I find 14 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 10, I find 248 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 10, Supplementary materials, I find 0 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 11, I find 252 instances for the word "uncertain." In WG1 - chapter 11, Supplementary materials, I find 2 instances for the word "uncertain." Total for WG1, the words, "uncertain," "uncertainty" or "uncertainties" occur 1,372 times. In a 940 page document that make the occurrence 1.45 times per page. I would suggest if the IPCC were trying to hide something about the uncertainties in climate change they are doing an incredibly poor job of it. Please don't make me do the other working groups.
  38. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Mela @102, That was brilliant!
  39. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Poptech, you might remember these quotes from an RJR document I found for you before that forum thread magically went poof (we never did find out what happened)... 1. "respond directly to fundamental attacks on our business", "refute the criticisms against cigarettes". 2. "Science really knows little about the causes and development mechanisms of chronic degenerative diseases imputed to cigarettes" 3. "The purpose of the RJR industries biomedical research program is to focus on the support of basic and applied scientific research regarding human, degenerative diseases." Smokin'! This was during an introductory speech by an RJR executive. Who were they introducing...(have a guess). As I outlined to you, RJR had more than one arm of their obfuscatory research. The CTR funded by most american tobacco companies funded direct research (to cast doubt) on the tobacco-health issue. The RJR research which Seitz oversaw had a slightly different slant, but a similar aim (cast doubt). As the quotes show, degenerative conditions were being linked to tobacco. Seitz research focused on such conditions. And RJR were keen to 'refute criticisms' of tobacco use. Cheers
  40. Climategate a year later
    Ken Lambert, the reason these uncontroversial e-mails were released is abundantly clear. By releasing this information-out of context-during the Copenhagen Climate Summit, they were able to sow just enough immediate doubt to give International Leaders an excuse to not fix any targets for future emissions reductions. This agenda fit in very nicely with the goals of the fossil fuel industry-which makes them the most likely source of the hack (either them or one of their front organizations). Of course, once everyone had time to analyze the e-mails-in their full context, it became blindingly obvious that there was no evidence of deceit or conspiracy within them.
  41. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra. Whoever "leaked" those e-mails was not a whistle-blower, he/she was a computer hacker-i.e. a CYBER CRIMINAL. As such, the only thing they deserve is a nice long stint in a Federal Prison. Or can I assume you'd have no problem if I hacked your e-mails & leaked them online for all to see? (Given your desire for anonymity, even here, I'm guessing you'd hate it) Also, you want a real scandal-it was the failure of the press to report on the following Internal Memo (obtained *legally*, via an FOI request) of the Global Climate Coalition (a skeptic organization) which said-& I quote "The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change. Jastrow's hypothesis about the role of solar variability and Michaels' questions about the temperature record are not convincing arguments against any conclusion that we are currently experiencing warming as the result of greenhouse gas emissions. However, neither solar variability nor anomalies in the temperature record offer a mechanism for off-setting the much larger rise in temperature which might occur if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases were to double or quadruple." This proves that, like the tobacco industry, the Denial Industry doesn't *believe* its own denial!
  42. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #37 Tom Dayton I did look at the Real Climate explanation of chaos. They do not talk about how temperature can effect albedo. If the only effect on temperature where GHG then the point would be valid. Small changes in albedo (the sensitivity response to determine if a system is chaotic) also have a large effect on temperature. As far as I have read the effect of increasing temperature on albedo is not worked out. There will be more water vapor in the air...will this form more clouds and increase albedo a few % points driving temps down?
  43. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra: "Yes, there is broad consensus about the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But there is no consensus about whether the feed backs by clouds and water vapour are positive or negative." Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, it has a positive feedback.
  44. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Poptech, #50 The Marchall Institutes's alleged "rebuttal" of the Oreskes-Conway book has a sort of "No, we didn't .... Oh, yes you did ... No, we didn't" back-and-forth flavour about it. they virtually repeat Oreskes-Conway's account of the facts, but putting a benign spin on every action. As a reader, admittedly with my own bias, I find the Oreskes-Conway descsription to be the more credible.
  45. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #34 muoncounter I agree with your statement: "So can small GHG changes, as this calculator clearly demonstrates. And this calculator demonstrates that temperature response to albedo is nearly linear -- systems described by linear function are hardly chaotic." Temperature response to albedo is linear as is temperature response to GHG levels. Look at it the other way, that is where I see the nonlinear and chaotic response. How does temperature effect albedo? This is a harder question to answer. Cooler Northern climate generate the snowfall that is highly reflective and will drastically increase the local albedo in the local area. Globally it may decrease the albedo by 1%. However the bigger albedo effect would be with the clouds. If the climate cools in the Northern regions (higher albedo from increased snow) like during an ice age but the oceans are still fairly warm (from the previous warm cycle) you may get an increase of cloud formation all around (still plenty of water vapor from the warm oceans but now a lot colder air to lift the moisture up to form clouds as a cold front moves through). This increased cloud cover acts to cool the Earth more and the decline in temp becomes steep and drops several degrees in a relative short time frame. As the Earth's overall temperature goes down the oceans begin to cool. Due to the heat capacity of water, the time lag is long. Once the ocean's are cool enough, less water evaporates and cloud formation really becomes significantly less and the albedo drops to much lower levels allowing much more solar radiation in to be absorbed by oceans gradually warming them and ending the ice age. When the oceans get warm enough the cloud formation reaches levels we see today and the albedo averages out to around 0.3. I am not saying this is what happens or takes place, I am using the above scenerio to point out how temperatures could have a nonlinear and drastic effect on albedo, which then will feedback and greatly effect the temperature.
  46. Climategate a year later
    Re: Berényi Péter (33) Your comment was deleted because it was deemed in violation of the Comments Policy; specifically due to your implication that because Dr. Rajendra Pachauri lived in a home that you perceived to be beyond the means of his current income that he therefore must have "missed" declaring a "hidden" source of income. I find that insinuation of dishonesty repugnant; a man of your intellect should be above conduct of that sort. As far as the moderated comment you question, I was moderating at that time & wrote that comment; a comment which you still have left the terms of which unfulfilled. SoundOff noticed the missing of the kerfuffle noise surrounding Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and summarized it, replete with a link to Monbiot's post from which SoundOff derived his quote. I have read and re-read both SoundOff's comment and Monbiot's post several times and fail to see to what you are taking issue with. So, please share the details of why you feel SoundOff's comment violates the Comments Policy, because (call me slow) I'm not seeing it. In the future when moderating, I shall identify myself so that others do not blame John for my moderating. The Yooper
  47. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra #22 ..."no consensus about whether the feed backs by clouds and water vapour are positive or negative"... And absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the substantial negative feedbacks required to offset the effect of increasing CO2 levels. What was your point again?
  48. Berényi Péter at 08:06 AM on 19 November 2010
    Climategate a year later
    Re: Moderator Response to #28: Please demonstrate how comment #1 in this thread is in error; as always, provide a linked source proof. Thanks!
    As far as I can see no one has demonstrated in any way how my deleted comment, which had links in it, was in error. And that with a linked source proof of its fault not even on the wish list. On the other hand, it was a clear demonstration of how #1 misrepresents facts. If I may ask, do not use double standards, please. Thanks.
  49. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    RSVP wrote: Ironically, the only way for AGW proponents to ultimately "prove" their theory is for global warming to actually happen. It must be very frustrating therefore to only be detecting +0.16 degrees C/decade, or +0.016 degrees per year, a value that competes hardily with measurement noise.
    You used "hardily" on purpose, don't you? You forgot to tell it is +0.0013 degrees per month, +0.000044 degrees per day, 29 degrees Fahrenheit per millenium, +0.000000005 degrees per second, 5,500 years away of hypothetical boiling oceans and so on? What do you meant by that. Say it clearly -what includes quantifying noise-.
  50. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    "Climategate" summarized: When papers containing errors that scientists would flunk their undergraduate students for are published and used as political weapons against them, said scientists are likely to get very cranky. That's pretty much all that the hacked email messages proved.

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