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Camburn at 02:31 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
muoncounter@117: The degree of warming in your graph is not even close to the amount of warming that Mr. Trenbeth calculates should be here. That is the travesty that he is talking about. 2010 is not above average as far as temp. Statistically, there has been no warming during the past 10 years, and in fact 15 years. You can show trends without the error bars and try to fool some people. When one is talking on a site that seems to be somewhat technical, it is better to show everything. -
muoncounter at 02:22 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#14: "a simplified version of my argument:" I suspect that daytime R is much greater than nighttime R, as a hotter body radiates more energy. So D = S - Rd and N = -Rn; with Rd > Rn, the difference is D - N = S - Rd + Rn. Another component of the impact of GHGs and anthropogenic aerosols in this process is the DTR difference between weekdays (typically higher urban CO2, corresponding with urban traffic patterns) and weekends. From Forster and Solomon 2003: The “weekend effect,” which we define as the average DTR for Saturday through Monday minus the average DTR for Wednesday through Friday, can be as large as 0.5 K ... We conclude that the weekend effect is a real short time scale and large spatial scale geophysical phenomenon, which is necessarily human in origin. We thus provide strong evidence of an anthropogenic link to DTR, an important climate indicator." -
Daniel Bailey at 01:58 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
Re: batsvensson (46) And in your world, the "broader picture" is...? The Yooper -
robert way at 01:52 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re: Argus (10) "Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers." http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/much-ado-about-something/ -
muoncounter at 01:50 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#13: "how much higher can carbon dioxide concentrations be around densely populated urban areas" Phoenix, due to its topography, is one of the worst CO2 domes I've found in the literature, as in Wang and Starzewski 2004: Recent measurements reveal that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the urban core of Phoenix, Arizona, are often 200 ppmv above the surrounding areas. This increase is up to two orders of magnitude higher than comparable values in other cities. ... Measurements taken to date reveal that the CO2 levels are greatest during the winter morning periods when the atmosphere is most stable and Phoenix vehicular traffic is increased substantially by its many winter visitors. As far as the direct impact on temperature due to 'locally' increased CO2, that seems to be an open, and in my opinion, very interesting question. Balling et al 2001 concluded that the impact was small, as the "elevated levels of CO2 decline rapidly to the height of the morning inversion layer". How they measured this by airplane during the morning rush hour is not clear. On the other hand, Stott et al 2004 spoke in terms of probabilites: ... estimate the contribution of human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other pollutants to the risk of the occurrence of unusually high mean summer temperatures throughout a large region of continental Europe. Using a threshold for mean summer temperature that was exceeded in 2003, but in no other year since the start of the instrumental record in 1851, we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude. -
Daniel Bailey at 01:47 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re; Karamanski (9) Here's a link to the Muir Russell report. I also commented on it here. In a nutshell, the Muir Russell Commission was indeed an independent investigation. I'll let you read it rather than influence your opinion in any way. The Yooper -
batsvensson at 01:42 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
@actually thoughtfull "As usual, the bad guys have better marketing than the good guys." This argument is known as playing the victims card. Used carefully, like here, it is very powerful but never less not an argument. -
Daniel Bailey at 01:41 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re: Argus (10)"Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers."
Argus, if you had taken the time to read the linked paper that the post you reference was based on, you'd have noted that the author sampled 1 issue of 1 Climate Science journal. Sample size of one. Pretty tiny. What Maarten Ambaum (the author of that paper) did not do was examine other publications in other disciplines to get a reference baseline for comparison purposes. I mean no disrespect to the author; a canvassing-the-field-type of investigation was not the intent of the paper. That would be like me reading your comment and extrapolating your words I quote above to mean that most of your comments take things out of context. One has to be careful with one's quotes, doesn't one? The Yooper -
Marcus at 01:34 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
As always, Ken, we can rely on you to post complete & total rubbish. The reality is that the underlying science behind climate change has always been sound-& remains sound-a fact that has irked the contrarians like yourself. Also, one good year of rain does *not* mean the drought is well & truly broken-indeed, in Perth its the worst its ever been-& even if it does, that doesn't automatically rule out the possibility that future rises in global temperature won't be catastrophic. The reality remains that the Fossil Fuel Industry-using its connections in Russia (probably Organized Crime)-hacked Web Sites & then distributed the e-mails (out of context) so as to coincide with the Copenhagen Conference. No matter how you try & spin that, Ken, it still amounts to CRIMINAL ACTIVITY-something I've yet to see the AGW proponents to be guilty of. Also, in spite of the claims that temperature data was fabricated (which would, if true, have been a real scandal) no contrarian has been able to provide *evidence* that the CRU data was false (hilariously, due to the smaller coverage of their weather stations, CRU show a *smaller* temperature gradient than the NOAA, RSS or GISS). Indeed, the worst that the e-mails reveal is that some scientists suffer from bouts of pettiness, anger & frustration-just like the rest of the Human Race. Seriously Ken et al, the moment you have something amounting to *evidence* that the predictions about AGW are false-rather than ever more fanciful ad hominem attacks-then maybe you'll gain some credibility. Until then, remember that even those from your own side *privately* don't believe their own propaganda. Now that should tell you something, shouldn't it? -
batsvensson at 01:34 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
This thread is hilarious, normally we would see at skepticalscience.com arguments that skeptics are cherry picking and do not see the broader picture. However in this case the situation has been reversed. *Gets some pop corns and beers and leans back in the chair...* -
Jeff T at 01:21 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Rob @11, thank you for the link to Dai et al. (1999). They find that changes in cloud cover cause the reduced DTR. Therefore, GHGs would be responsible for reduced DTR only if they change the clouds. That sequence of causation seems to be a negative feedback. muoncounter @12, I don't follow your logic. Here is a simplified version of my argument: During the day, the vertical heat flux is D = SolarInsolation(S) - NetLongWaveRadiation(R) At night, the flux is N = -R The difference in the fluxes is D - N = S - R -(-R) = S Suppose that GHGs reduce R to R'. Then we have D = S - R', N = -R' and D - N = S. The day/night difference doesn't change. If the difference in fluxes doesn't change, the temperature range shouldn't change. The argument that GHGs cause the observed reduction in DTR seems pretty weak. -
batsvensson at 01:15 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
@Riccardo #5 I think your comment sweeps under the carpet an issue that have concerned at least me for a very long time. John made this comment to a post of mine once: "Perhaps a more precise description would be that a common pattern in global warming skeptic arguments is to focus on narrow pieces of evidence while ignoring other evidence that contradicts their argument." And this is the issue the article discuss, but in my opinion this article is in guilt of this as well. It focus on a narrow set of non representative claims, claims which is indeed pure propaganda by some skeptics, however the article also suggest guilt buy association and as such these propaganda claims then gets attributed to the be opinions of the entire skeptic camp. In doing so, the OP becomes guilty of the very same issue the OP tries to address. In other words, the issue I try to raise is not about the exact numbers or figures or any particular facts but the fact that the claim I quoted is obvious nonsense. It is nonsense because it a sweeping statement with no specifics and as such it is an empty statement and means nothing. A second point I been thinking about when reading this article is why should scientist be granted immunity to dirty tricks/propaganda in a political debate? Is it because they speak under the name of science? If that is the case, why shall we not grant the same right to other spokesmen for other organization?Moderator Response: This is the first post in a series on Climategate. I will address more specific allegations in the coming days. - James -
Argus at 01:13 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
I really don't understand why the AGW lobby has to keep repeating that there never was a scandal, and that the scientists never did anything wrong. Who believes in all that white-washing anyway? Everybody knows that there was a bit of a scandal, and that the scientists did what they did, and wrote what they wrote. The fact that the scientific community, afterwards, is unable to find any errors within itself, is not convincing, just a bit boring. Climate scientists, who keep claiming that the Earth is heading towards a global disaster, have to be very careful with what they write and say. Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers. And what about the Himalayan glaciers? -
Karamanski at 01:11 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
muoncounter, how much higher can carbon dioxide concentrations be around densely populated urban areas compared to the global CO2 concentration? How large of an impact can local variations in carbon dioxide concentrations have on nightime temperatures? -
Riccardo at 01:09 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Ken Lambert, what's the context, in your opinion? -
Karamanski at 01:05 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Many conservative columnists claim that the investigations were sponsored by the Unversity of East Anglia. Is this even true? If so, is it relevant to the accuracy of the investigations? Just to clarify, I am not a skeptic. -
muoncounter at 00:45 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
#115: KL, Hasn't the old 'lack of warming - its a travesty' dodge run its course?
--Realclimate
Even the highly “cherry-picked” 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 ºC per decade (which may surprise some lay people who tend to connect the end points, rather than include all ten data points into a proper trend calculation).
And then we have 2010, which continues to be well above average:
- The October worldwide land surface temperature was 0.91°C above the 20th century average
- The October worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.40°C above the 20th century average
- The global average ocean surface temperature for the period January–October tied with 2003 as the second warmest on record, behind 1998.
Taking all the evidence, seems pretty solid.
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Ken Lambert at 00:41 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Original Post The fact that three quick fire threads have been run on Climatgate on this excellent blog in the last few days is an indication that Climategate (fairly or not) has does serious damage to the cause of AGW activism. Mass media always overshoots and exaggerates. The AGW alarmists had a very good run - here in Australia protagonists like Tim Flannery and our living science legend Robin Williams were talking catastrophe - the 10 year drought was definitely permanent climate change - rivers might never run again - Robin (100 metre sea level rise) Williams refused to even read the Climategate emails. Climategate swung the pendumum to the other extreme - the scientists (nearly all funded by you and me) were under the pump. Their socks rubbed harder on their sandals as they scrambled for clear air. Cries about criminal hackers funded by big oil, tobacco, rightist conspirators etc were heard. Panchuri cried 'voodoo science' as he denied ever knowing about objections to the preposterous 2035 claim. How things change in a year. The drought is broken over most of Australia - Tim Flannery has gone quiet and Robin Williams is airing a science journo who says that AGW scares have been exaggerated. Some balance might have been restored as the pendulum swung, and our hard working misunderstood scientist bretheren will take more care with their emails in future. -
muoncounter at 00:28 AM on 21 November 2010It's the sun
#731: "The glacial cycle would seem to have made a much bigger difference " The 'glacial cycle' is a result, not a cause. Increased atmospheric CO2 is a causative agent (aka 'forcing') of increased warming. See CO2 is not the only driver. Please find the appropriate threads for further comments about whatever you refer to as 'cycles' -- this is 'its the sun'. -
muoncounter at 00:17 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
#99: "Given what has been reported in the press about suppression of articles critical to the AGW premise," If by press, you mean the usual crowd of denial blogs, conservative 'think-tanks' or the claims of the ID crowd that they aren't allowed to 'teach the debate'. But on balance, you've got it backwards: Hansen on censored science Research findings suppressed by government -
Ken Lambert at 00:13 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
John's Original Post and Marco: "The evidence for human caused global warming is as solid as ever." Why don't we ask Dr Trenberth a lead author and recognized expert on the forcings and energy balances: This excerpt from the NP and Climategate emails: Quote: The 2001 Synthesis Report looked authoritative in its carbon and temperature outlooks. But one of the “lead authors” was Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Eight years later, Mr. Trenberth shows up in the emails. On Oct. 14, 2009, he wrote to Tom Wigley: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” In other words, one of the lead authors of the 100-year climate forecasting exercise says there’s something wrong with the models —or the data. End Quote Ref: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/18/terence-corcoran-a-2-000-page-epic-of-science-and-skepticism-part-1.aspx#ixzz15pLvdnlg Before you all scream 'out of context' - please consider in what context such an opinion of a leading expert in this field and lead IPCC author would support the proposition that "The evidence for human caused global warming is as solid as ever." -
kdkd at 00:12 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
KL #44 Why do you waste your time with that comment, when you could try and provide a sensible answer to #37 instead? If you managed that it would greatly strengthen your argument. However the fact that you won't or can't looks to me like a tacit acknowlegement that your argument is on extremely thin ice. -
KeenOn350 at 00:04 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Kudos, Jame. Agree with David Horton. -
muoncounter at 23:59 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#7: "Why should greenhouse gases (GHGs) reduce diurnal temperature range (DTR)?" You've answered your own question: "GHGs reduce that radiation loss both day and night." During the day, there is more incoming solar radiation, so the ground/water heat up or maintain an equilibrium. At night, there is no incoming solar radiation, so the ground gives up heat with little to replace it - except by conduction/convection. Since more GHGs are in the atmosphere, more of that outgoing LWIR is trapped -- and what should be cooler nights turn into warmer nights. Here's a primer: CO2 ... traps radiation or heat given off by the earth. This captured heat warms the lower atmosphere, preventing strong nighttime cooling. Carbon dioxide levels are highest near industrial sections since carbon dioxide is the by-product of combustion, a common manufacturing process. The atmosphere surrounding large cities contains higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, thus nighttime cooling in large cities is less than in surrounding areas. -
jorgepeine at 23:58 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
thank you, James. It is a very transparent paper and I will use it within my paper on the situation - which is similar here in Germany - Contrarians contra Mainstream -
Ken Lambert at 23:35 PM on 20 November 2010Climategate a year later
Marco #41 Give me your email address and I will snd you my last 14 years of business emails. They will cure your insomnia. I am sure you will agree with my radical personal opinion expressed to my Yankee associates in there somewhere that George W. Bush is vying for the title of worst US President of all time with Rutherford Hayes. I have no reason to not accept the truth of the below excerpt from NP: "Mr. Mann meddled in other ways. In January 2005, he called the editor of Geophysical Research Letters, the official science publication of the American Geophysical Union, to try to head off a paper by Mr. McIntyre. The editor, Steve Mackwell, defends the decision to publish and tells Mr. Mann that the McIntyre paper has been thoroughly peer reviewed by four scientists. “You would not in general be asked to look it over,” Mr. Mackwell told Mr. Mann. Later in 2005, Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Jones on their troubles with the GRL journal after Mr. Mackwell’s term as editor was up: “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership.” Reference: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/21/terence-corcoran-a-2-000-page-epic-of-science-and-skepticism-part-2.aspx#ixzz15p66k1Ad Now you have mis-represented your 'rejection' of a paper in a peer review process with what is described in the above excerpt. The two are not the same. The Mann incident is an attempt to interfere with a peer review process at GRL which had already been conducted by 4 scientists by pressuring the Editor. When the Editor's term expired, Mann described it as a "leak which has been plugged"!! A leak in what - a well respected journal of record such as GRL was 'leaking' - leaking what? Clearly anything which Mr Mann and his colleagues did not agree with. And clearly the new Editor of GRL was 'their man (or woman)' because now the leak had been plugged. So now Marco - your honest appraisal and rejection of a paper in your role as peer reviewer you seem to regard as equivalent of 'suppressing other people's work'. Oh dear Ken, thats what we do in science as gatekeepers of the citadel. Amen. Dear Marco, it all depends on your reasons for rejecting other peoples' work, and whether you improperly attempt to compromise the independence of other peer reviewers or pressure Editors to interfere with a properly conducted peer review process. If that cap fits - wear it! -
Riccardo at 23:08 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
batsvensson it does not make much sense to quibble on the numbers or on who is and who is not. The point James is making should be clear enough to anyone, the double standard. -
batsvensson at 22:15 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
"Climate scientists have to be right 100% of the time, but contrarians apparently can get away with being wrong nearly 100% of the time." Says who? -
David Horton at 21:37 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Good work James, I disagree with gp. It is past time we all got angry, very angry, at what these people have done and continue to do. Dispassionate science doesn't cut it with the denial industry or with the media (and that "or" really isn't there). It's time to fight back with everything we can throw back at them. -
Riccardo at 21:26 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
It's not about science, indeed. But I think we should not let politically motivated people intentionally ignore the clearings of the allegations and mislead the public. I hope that we'll not see other agressions to scientist so we, and scientists in first place, can only focus on the science of climate change. But I'm not that optimistic. -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:14 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker @ 99 Firstly, Nature is pretty much *the* top journal in the natural sciences, publishing there is *extremely* competitive and the paper needs to be excellent and essentially flawless to get published. E&E, on the other hand is pretty much the bottom of the pile - if M&M had wanted the paper published in a peer reviewed journal there are plenty that they could have chosen that lie somewhere in the spectrum between Nature and E&E. Not getting published in Natura is not the same as not being able to get published. What generally happens is that an author will send a paper to the best journal that he/she thinks will accept it. If it gets rejected, it gets submitted to a journal on the next rung down on the ladder (hopefully after having been revised to take into account the reviewers comments). Eventually if the paper has any merit it will get published; generally the stature of the journal where it gets published is an indication of the quality of the publication. As for Shaviv, the authors responses to papers do not routineley get sent to the reviewers is the paper is rejected without the option of resubmitting (which is what happens if the paper has a fundamental flaw). I very much doubt an editor should give a comment like "any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected" in writing - it would be a cereer limiting move - you have to ask yourself why has the rejection letter/email not been published as evidence of editorial bias? As a scientist myself that has published, reviewed and edited journal papers, neither story is very convincing. -
Rob Painting at 21:00 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Jeff T @7 - It's not obvious to me that the effect of GHGs should be greater at night. You make a valid point. Further to Ari's suggestion: Effects of Clouds, Soil Moisture, Precipitation, and Water Vapor on Diurnal Temperature Range "The nighttime minimum temperature is largely controlled by the greenhouse effect of lower atmospheric water vapor, while the daytime maximum temperature depends heavily on the surface solar heating, which is strongly affected by cloud cover, and the amount of it that is released into the air by sensible and latent heat, which depends on soil moisture content." -
Paul D at 19:57 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker and others have not raised anything new in respect to this subject. There are two outcomes to all this: 1. The science is correct. 2. The CRU made management mistakes and is correcting them. eg. all outcomes are positive. -
perseus at 19:56 PM on 20 November 201010 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change
I have just realised that most of the observations in the illustration is strictly not evidence of anthropologically induced global warming, only global warming. Natural warming could induce more water vapour into the atmosphere producing many of these radiative effects. The remaining observations only suggest that we have simply released more carbon into the atmosphere! To show AGW we need to show a) the basic theory of GHG warming in conjunction with evidence that these GHGs are human based (eg. from isotopic analysis), you have done this elsewhere. b) the measured relationships between GHGs and temperature, particularly the sudden rise in global temperatures when large quantities of carbon emissions were first released around 1900. Have any statisticians assessed the probability this rapid change, in conjunction with GHG concentrations might have happened by chance (the null hypothesis). I guess this would be very low. c) the absence of any plausible natural mechanism, once again you have covered this elsewhere. -
Paul D at 19:54 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Philippe Chantreau: "The FOI requests thing is so abusive that anyone who really cares about conserving the FOI process should be concerned." Indeed. The CRU was 'spammed' and failed to manage the issue adequately. -
Paul D at 19:51 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "If it can't stand up to a hostile researcher, it is not science." Your description of 'hostile research' doesn't sound like science to me, it sounds like business, PR and business competition. -
Paul D at 19:46 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests." 1. It didn't happen, as Phil Jones has pointed out in Nature. 2. It wouldn't be illegal in any case, because an FOI request for the emails hadn't been placed before the suggestion to delete emails was made. There isn't a requirement to archive emails! -
Paul D at 19:40 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "Regarding the post from whomever 'The Ville' is, I provided the link to an article which talked about the reported failure to follow FOI laws, and the deleting of emails." UK FOI law doesn't require emails to be kept in advance of an FOI request. eg. if the email is deleted and then later a copy is requested at a later date, the law is not broken. -
Paul D at 19:31 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "So far, I have not yet found your post where I assume you do the same." My reference is myself, because unlike you, I went to a public meeting of climate scientists including Mike Hulme. eg. first hand direct info, instead of second or third hand info from a news paper. -
Paul D at 19:28 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "Clean up my own act? I just posted comments from sources, and included the actual sources. So far, I have not yet found your post where I assume you do the same. Your main intellectual activity seems to be name calling. It is not very flattering." 1. My comment was about you and your comment. 2. My previous comment stands. If you choose outdated media sources as a reference, then you do indeed meed to clean up your act. 3. Suggesting someone cleans up their act isn't name calling. -
Tom Dayton at 19:09 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Chris, peer review normally is brutal. M&M's rejection was not the least unusual for any scientific field. See: Stephan Lewandowsky's The Peer Reviewed Literature Has Spoken. Stephan's Peer Review vs Commercials and Spam. My comment #25 here, My comment #33 but with its correction #35, and my comment #34. My comment #40. -
cjshaker at 19:07 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Tom: Thank you for the pointers to the documents on temperature deltas. Was wondering why that was done. I think that's enough reading for tonight for me. Drinking from the fire hose again. Chris Shaker -
Philippe Chantreau at 19:05 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
"I don't have to pretend to be perfect." Yes but you don't have a rabid herd of lunatics to accuse you of fraud when you happen not to be perfect. Wanna try having them watching you 24/7? Wanna try having them call you a fraud every time that you make an honest mistake? Or just when there is something they don't understand? That wouldn't make you a little defensive? M&M failed to convince Science that their paper was important. The same thing happened to probably 10s of thousands of researchers. Do they go on accusing their entire area of exercice to be fraudulent? Please... -
gpwayne at 18:56 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
As worthy as this defense is, surely this is the kind of political bun-fight SkS has resolutely stayed away from since its inception. The debate can only become a quagmire of competing claims, because this is part of an adversarial process that does not depend on, or even require, scientific evidence. Only by sticking resolutely to the science and the advocacy of the scientific method can SkS continue to avoid being drowned in the kind of mud through which we are obliged to wade elsewhere. -
Philippe Chantreau at 18:55 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Nonsense. A skeptic once posted on this site a compilation of 700 papers that were skeptical of AGW, how do they do it? As I said, McLean et al was published, Lindzen was published, and Spencer etc, etc. It's quite possible Shaviv's paper was bad, it happens. Sometimes a paper is rejected for no good reason (or so it seems to the author), it happens in biology, chemistry, archaeology, any and all area. You try again, or you try another journal or you put it on the shelf until you can make it better and you move on. If you don't move on and just go on belly aching about how it's all unfair you end up never publishing anything. That's life. -
cjshaker at 18:53 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Adelady: We all make mistakes. In my life, I've been better served by being up front with my numerous mistakes, and letting the chips fall where they may. I don't have to pretend to be perfect. Chris Shaker -
Tom Dayton at 18:47 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Chris, temperatures are converted to anomalies to reduce noise. See NCDC (hat tip to the Yooper) and the IPCC Working Group I report from the TAR. -
adelady at 18:45 PM on 20 November 2010Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
actually thoughtful, $4 per gallon? Yesterday morning, petrol was 1.33 a litre at my nearest servo, which is just over $5 a US gallon. I managed to buy some in the afternoon for the wonderful bargain price of 1.15. $4.35 a gallon. I do not understand why petrol is so cheap in the USA. I do not understand why people think that the USA could not survive if prices were higher. -
cjshaker at 18:43 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Phillipe: Given what has been reported in the press about suppression of articles critical to the AGW premise, criticizing someone for not having a peer reviewed article may be a circular argument. Given what Dr. Muller says on his website, I'm not surprised that M&M were unable to get a paper published. http://muller.lbl.gov/ "Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitrick's only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish." Here is one from Israeli Astrophysicist, Nir Shaviv: "I witnessed how an editor rejected a paper I wrote without forwarding the reviewers my detailed response to their comments (he was perhaps afraid that the reviewers would actually be convinced with my detailed response which included detailed referrals to published results proving my points). I saw another rejection (perhaps by the same editor...), this time of a paper written by a colleague that included the punch line: "any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected" I saw how proposal reviewers bluntly reject funding requests, based on similar beliefs in the global warming apocalypse. I even know of someone who didn't get tenure because he advocated non party line ideas. " From http://www.sciencebits.com/node/211 Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 18:19 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
They address third party data that was not generally accessible, but now is archived: "24. On the allegations in relation to withholding data, in particular concerning the small sample size of the tree ring data from the Yamal peninsula, CRU did not withhold the underlying raw data (having correctly directed the single request to the owners). But it is evidently true that access to the raw data was not simple until it was archived in 2009 and that this delay can rightly be criticized on general principles. In the interests of transparency, we believe that CRU should have ensured that the data they did not own, but on which their publications relied, was archived in a more timely way. " They address the FOI act as well: "27. On the allegation that CRU does not appear to have acted in a way consistent with the spirit and intent of the FoIA or EIR, we find that there was unhelpfulness in responding to requests and evidence that e-mails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them. University senior management should have accepted more responsibility for implementing the required processes for FoIA and EIR compliance. " They criticize University Management for not having proper FOI compliance procedures in place. I'll ask some possibly stupid questions regarding this paragraph: "One of CRU‘s most important contributions to climate science is the production of a land based, gridded temperature data set showing how the temperature has varied year by year since 1850 relative to the 1961 to 1990 average." I noticed that convention, of storing a delta from a temperature average in looking at the temperature proxy data extracted from the ice cores. Why do they store a delta? And what is the 1961 to 1990 average? Is it some kind of global average? Or an average for the reporting station over that time period? Thank you, Chris Shaker
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