Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

[SpasticGramps]

The earth is the center of the universe. Maybe, that's a better point. Science is the search for the truth, not the truth itself.

 

[stink.whistler]

Case in point.

People often confuse 'average' and 'median'.

Umm, the idea of a spherical Earth didn't come about until Ancient Greek times. Presocratic Pythagoreans believed the world was flat. Philosphoy and science were closely intertwined then as they are now. Quantum Physics anyone?

Certainly by the time there was such a thing as a 'scientist', folks who were scientists did not think the world was flat. Yes, there is philosophy behind science / philosophies of science, but by the time the scientific method was in place, actual scientists were aware that the world was not flat.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

global warming is going to happen weather we want it to or not, even though we arnt helping at all. The sun is going through a cycle; a temporary expanding phase. The expantion is at a peak point in 2012 coincidently. If we clean up our act now we will be fine by 2020. Other wise our plastic trash will cover the whole damn planet.

 

[SpasticGramps]

People often confuse 'average' and 'median'.

Certainly by the time there was such a thing as a 'scientist', folks who were scientists did not think the world was flat. Yes, there is philosophy behind science / philosophies of science, but by the time the scientific method was in place, actual scientists were aware that the world was not flat.

And two thousand years from now (considering we make it) will they say the same about us. Technological advance is exponential and directly effects evolution IMO.

 

[dude06version]

fall of the republic nailed the whole "90 percent of scientist" myth. fact is most of the scientist that specialize in climate change know its bs. not all scientist are experts on the subject. thats like assuming any doctor can perform brain surgery.

 

[stink.whistler]

And two thousand years from now (considering we make it) will they say the same about us.

What will they say? I don't get your point. They will say 21st century scientists didn't practice the scientific method or that we thought the earth was flat?

Technological advance is exponential and directly effects evolution IMO.

I completely agree.

 

[cashmunny]

People often confuse 'average' and 'median'.

For intelligence which is a gaussian distribution mean and median are the same.

 

[SpasticGramps]

We are going to look like a bunch of retards in a few thousand years is my point. I understand that the dawn of the scientific method is kind of our starting point, but I think we over estimate our importance in the universe every once in a while and get caught up in the moment. That's not to say we don't have a problem. We do. We rely on a finite source of energy and using it damages the planet. The two trends are unsustainable for our continued existence. Education is the key and it's what always works the best. Economic viability will drive us to solutions. I think it's funny that we go over to China and India and say "Hey, y'all can't use coal and oil to develop your country like we did" I mean, what are they going to say? Are they going to create an environmental mess. Yep. That's the bitch about sovereignty and operating in a global state of anarchy. If it becomes too much of a problem. War ensues. I digress. I think we'll know more about this in a few hundred years. Until then conservation is key.

 

[stink.whistler]

For intelligence which is a gaussian distribution mean and median are the same.

Certainly deviation IQ tests by design show a gaussian distribution but I do not agree that it likely that intelligence follows a gaussian distribution. (I'm fairly anti IQ testing though - so perhaps instead of saying your statement is not true, I should have stated I do not think such a statement can be proven).

 

[stink.whistler]

We are going to look like a bunch of retards in a few thousand years is my point. I understand that the dawn of the scientific method is kind of our starting point, but I think we over estimate our importance in the universe every once in a while and get caught up in the moment. ...

Well, I don't think folks a few thousand years back 'look like a bunch of retards', nor do I think we will be seen as 'retards' in a couple thousand years (I am very skeptical that we humans will be around by then in significant numbers anyway) - but I agree w/ the rest of your statement I quoted above.

Environmentalism in general (and climate change is not the biggest environmental threat out there) is about saving ourselves, not the planet. The planet, and life will be around long after human's short blip on the universe's radar.

 

[SpasticGramps]

I can safely call neanderthal man a dumbass.

 

[stink.whistler]

I can safely call neanderthal man a dumbass.

Never met one myself, but you are jumping back way more than a couple thousand years with neanderthal man.

 

[SpasticGramps]

I'm an optimist.

 

[Machine Elf]

Oh gezze.

I ALREADY debunked all this hacker nonsense in that other thread in a previous post.

As I said before obviously these 12 year old hackers and republicans can't actually read the documents that were hacked, they will just make false claims that the documents disprove climate destabilization.

They don't.

In fact the documents show that not only is climate destabilizing but is getting worse at an increasing rate. You will see correspondence dealing with this issue.

This is the kind of correspondence that happens in science all the time between scientists, the kind of thing you want and need so that the best, most unbiased and pertinent data and models are used, and the best explanation of that data meted out.

Oh I also said that already!

But conservatives, republicans and science deniars will eat up the headlines and proclaim that climate is not destabilizing when we know it is, I posted all the graphs and I read the documents

It is too bad that even science deniars exist among those that use entheogens, especially those here.
I would suggest increasingly large doses for these people and a "back to basics" in terms of science education.
They give cannabis smokers a very bad name with ludicrous statements such as "we know CO2 isn't poison our plants love it" <--- what a loser

Science deniars show their increasing ability to troll internet forums and blogs and troll the air waves with their rhetoric and vitriol but they never present anything of substance.

Taking statements out of context and then trying to make a false claim with them not only shows the futility of the claim but is the typical straw man argument!

These same fools will claim "now they went from global warming to climate change so there can't be any global warming".

Again these liars forget the fact that it was conservative science deniars like themselves who got other people to start calling global warming "climate change".
The phrase "climate change" is directly traceable to a conservative republican science deniar and was suggested so as to lessen the impact the phrase global warming has and to confuse the issue about what is really going on.

Here is a video I found today, it shows real time data of CO2 sources and emissions from the USA. It is quite striking. One can see how the prevailing winds carry most of the CO2 northward where it will stay and circulate around the poles, which is where we see the largest increases in temperature in addition to loss of ice cover:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpj8UUMTaI

 

[Machine Elf]

With a few seconds of searching, I can find plenty of articles and blogs being written up already with the truth countering these latest denialist claims.

Here are some goodies:

http://www.civilianism.com/futurism/?p=3534

Hackers Hit Climate Data Site, Make Fools of Themselves
A crime has been committed by climate deniers. A real crime. Some ‘denialists’, (a group whose beliefs have turned into a cult) have hacked a raw climate data site. Now they are trying to use it to “prove” global warming isn’t based on real science due to the language the scientists used in writing about their data. This is the ultimate nerdy crime but it’s way off base. These are people (all lonely guys, apparently) who think they know more about science than scientists, and are pretending to know more about how scientists talk to each other than scientists. They have just spent a few days gloating about the crime’s supposed revelations. They are gloating about nothing at all.

It all reminds me of that loud, annoying woman from Alaska who said that she can’t believe that loving human beings evolved from fish that sprouted legs, in her new book. Instead of admitting she doesn’t understand the theory, she attacks it as nonsense.

I seem to remember people being smarter, years ago . . . oh well. Below are stories about the hacking story. And they can’t even do it right. Writes a Man with a Ph.D.:

“None of the emails I have seen show anything untoward actually happened. It is only by taking things out of either the context of the email or historical context that anything can be made. In particular, worry anytime you see ellipses (…) in something like this. Quote-mining is what denialists do.

The best response I read in the comments was this, which presents reality that these people need to hear:


#430 Intrigue says: “Does anybody think that this is the only compilation that the hacker has? After this little taste, perhaps another two, or three, or twelve compilations will be presented onto the net. Looking forward to the rest of the chapters, after certain folks have explained their way into a deep hole.”



Another priceless quote from the Watt denier readers (WUWT — google it, I’m not going to link to it) : “Keep it up!!! Holy cow, they are on the ropes now. It won’t be long before the ref stops this fight! As Hunter said, go go go!!!!”

Yeah, holy cow! “It’s about time us regular Joes (the Plumbers) told those scientists a thing or two! After all, there’s more of us dumbf**ers!”

The real story from RealClimate is here. As they point out, the hacking results are more notable for what they didn’t find (a leftist conspiracy) than what they did find (some scientist talk).

“More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.”

RealClimate got one thing wrong: Vegetarians are mainstream. What the Deniers have nightmares about are the vegan overlords.

They correctly point out that global warming isn’t a vast conspiracy funded by… the scientists themselves, or maybe magazines, or maybe George Soros or Al Gore.

The Register, whoever they are, seems to be all about tabloid-style writing.

The Deniers/Denialists are like the 9/11 ‘Truthers’ who claimed that steel can’t possibly be softened or melted by fire (it sure can be, and it was) and that the laws of physics can’t explain buildings fall down “into their own footprint”. Of course buildings can fall that way, and yes according to physics, because they did. Unless it was a magnetic pole-shift, . . . . or Planet X.

Yes, scientists sometimes talk nerdy to each other. The funny part is when the Deniers try to decipher their talk, as though it should all be taken literally, like the word “trick”. That’s like taking the word “gay” literally as written in The Advocate.

It’s time for the cult members to step aside and let scientists tell us what is happening, and what to do about climate change. Denialists are obviously listening to Fox (FAUX) news, which has stepped up appearances by the Deniers and their followers lately.

And another

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/

The CRU hack

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.

Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

There are of course lessons to be learned. Clearly no-one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies. That community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye. But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should.

It is tempting to point fingers and declare that people should not have been so open with their thoughts, but who amongst us would really be happy to have all of their email made public?

Let he who is without PIN cast the the first stone.

Update: The official UEA statement is as follows:

“We are aware that information from a server used for research information
in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,”
the spokesman stated.

“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm
that all of this material is genuine.”

“This information has been obtained and published without our permission
and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from
operation.”

“We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved
the police in this enquiry.”

It is really funny how people want to believe lies and not the reality of the situation. But yes plenty do live in fantasy land, we know this already

 

[Frozenguy]

With a few seconds of searching, I can find plenty of articles and blogs being written up already with the truth countering these latest denialist claims.

Here are some goodies:

And another


It is really funny how people want to believe lies and not the reality of the situation. But yes plenty do live in fantasy land, we know this already

Global warming due to us and our CO2 byproducts is a complete joke, regardless of these hackers and what they found or didn't find.

With that said, when you know something is a scam, you tend to want to call out those that did it.

 

[Machine Elf]

Global warming due to us and our CO2 byproducts is a complete joke, regardless of these hackers and what they found or didn't find.
With that said, when you know something is a scam, you tend to want to call out those that did it.

And the scientific studies you have done showing it is a complete scam are published where...?

The in depth research and observed data is found at.....?

Yes I thought so.

I think you are a complete joke

What scam? The hackers committed a crime and LIED about what they claim to have found.

I know this because I have read the documents, anyone can, they are available online for anyone to read!

There is nothing in the emails that would lend credence to any kind of fraud, misrepresentation, misleading, hyping, etc. on the part of scientists.

In essence, the deniers are lying again after committing a heinous violation of law.

Why didn't they do something useful and hack the pentagon like Gary McKinnon so as to clear his name and disseminate to the public hidden information on alleged UFOs? It is obvious; the hackers are involved with companies or propaganda mills that lobby to keep polluting, industries that will lose billions in profits with legislation that will clean up their toxic practices.

You didn't read the articles I posted. Read them before typing, it helps!

Some good videos from a journalist who has followed global warming science and the corporate denial for many years now. He lays it out quite well. I suggest you watch these videos and catch up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoSVoxwYrKI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iamwqmgn5ow&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com//watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU&feature=s ub

If you don't want to watch the videos or read the articles, then there can obviously be no discussion.
Wanting to deny facts via making up a whole different set "facts" to go by that misrepresent the observed data, clearly shows delusion is taking over rational thought.

 

[ItsGrowTime]

Machine Elf appears to be in damage control overdrive. Good luck putting the genie back in the bottle Elf!

 

[Bobby Stainless]

I think we need to put something on our electrical meters that acts as a nanny device. That way when people are needlessly using 1000 extra watts, we can stop them.

Hope that doesn't effect anyone here...

I'm glad I went legit, this Global Warming/Climate Change agenda WILL END INDOOR GROWING.

Machine Elf is definitely part of the machine.

 

[Machine Elf]

Conspiracies within governments?!?!?

No way I don't believe that could happen

In UK, USA, Europe, Russia, China, etc., any country really, it is not speech and information that is not true that is suppressed and censored.
It is information that is true which becomes the speech that is silenced.
Oftentimes it is directly due to the fact that it could be damaging to the people and policies inside that particular government, as well as the laws and practices upon which that government governs it's people or other nations.

There are many examples of this kind of censorship, and leading examples I am sure you can relate to would be the kind of thing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn have to deal with.
But even people inside government have to deal with this sort of thing, persons on the fringe like Ron Paul and Jesse Ventura (who actually are getting their say now), I am sure stick in your mind as prominent figures, though there are many you do not know about.
Even sell outs like Alex Jones, who is amazingly adept at shelling out the same lies and misrepresentations about any particular issue such as climate science or vaccinations, is often correct about practices within the USA federal government pertaining to corruption and back alley partnerships, the furthering of the American empire. I feel Alex was more genuine in his younger years and post 9/11 has largely taken on the typical driveling conservative talk show host persona.

What is the point of this? >>>

Climate destabilization censorship inside USA government:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhaML-S4Wuw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYlyG6JJraU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAZo1FGPYiE&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iamwqmgn5ow&feature=channel