Catholicism and Climate Change

[JasonSB]

I’m happy you brought up PR groups - What do you think of Realclimate;s role with Environmental Media Services AKA Fenton Communication - Science Communications …all part of Mr Soros Tides Foundation?

I don’t think anything of it. Do you? I’ve seen no evidence that RealClimate does not reflect the opinions of the scientists it claims to represent.

Oh NoES…MY MY MY !!! How much is 40% of his income? $10,000.00 - $30,000.00 ? Oh Noes noes!!!

You obviously have no idea what his income is, or there wouldn’t be a range of 3:1 in your estimates. But I will point out the obvious: if his income is low, then 40% of it becomes even more important because a higher percentage of it is required to live.

But anyway, on just one occasion he got $150,000 after he “told Western business leaders … that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research” and noted that they had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps. (boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/07/27/utilities_paying_global_warming_skeptic/)

So not only does he get funding from vested interests but he even tells them in advance what their funding will get them.

Contrast this to normal scientific funding, where grants are awarded for specific projects with no claims or expectations about what the outcome of that research will be.

Oh, and the obvious fact, that I’ve already explained to you, that researchers at tertiary institutions don’t actually get the research funding themselves. Michaels does.

C’mon he’s a circuit lecturer.

Right. “Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians, but lacks Richard Lindzen’s scientific stature. He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.” (stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/HoldrenRPCClimateComments.pdf) He runs a PR firm, is a frequent speaker with coal and energy companies, and is associated with several of the well-known right-wing think tanks.

And yet he’s what qualifies as a “skeptical scientist”, and you are even more “skeptical” than he is!

Think about that for a moment. Even $150,000 payments aren’t enough to get him to make the claims that you are making.

Nonsense

Oh, no, I can assure you, when you gloss over “40%” like you just did, it definitely speaks volumes to me.

But let’s go with that – you dismiss out of hand the idea that Pat Michaels would be influenced by 40% of his income coming from the fossil fuel industry.

What percentage of Phil Jones’ income do you think comes from what you might consider “vested interests”?

ALL energy Companies benefit from promoting the hypothesis of AGW… It’s just who gets the biggest bite from apple. The Mr. Gores OR the Companies that add the Taxes to your energy. The only disagreement between Al Gore and Exxon, BP , Nuclear Power Producers, etc etc is who gets to sink the teeth in first.

Wow, that’s really fascinating. So when Pat Michales told them that they had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps, and in response they gave him $150,000, they were wrong? And when ExxonMobil decided to adopt the practices of the Tobacco Industry – and even the same people and organisations – in order to delay action on climate change, they made a mistake? (ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf)

I’m sure they would all love to hear kimmielittle’s theory of how reducing CO2 emissions will actually benefit them. They might even give you the millions and millions of dollars they have been spending on trying to convince people not to reduce CO2 emissions.

BTW He is talking about A Flat Tax called a Carbon Tax …At the gas pump

I actually quite like the idea of letting free markets figure things out rather than having the government pick winners. Don’t you?

The problem is that, at the moment, the free market is being distorted. Instead of picking the energy sources that have the lowest costs, it is picking the energy sources that can push the most costs onto third parties – externalities. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities)

In the case of fossil fuels, carbon emissions are an externality. The science tells us that there is a cost to emitting carbon, and at the moment neither the buyers or the sellers are paying that cost – the world as a whole is. As a consequence, fossil fuels appear cheaper than they really are, and alternatives that do not have the same externalities are being competed against unfairly.

Personally, I would like a simple carbon tax, calculated as accurately as possible on the true cost to the world of emitting that carbon. It can be revenue-neutral – i.e. the tax collected can be either returned directly to everyone, or it can be used to reduce other taxes in general. What it will do is make a level playing field for all technologies, which the free market is then free to choose between. And that’s what he’s saying.

 

[JasonSB]

IMHO it’s a little dishonest to state this. While it’s true that Svante Arrhenius First promoted this hypothesis in the late 1800’s - it was debunked by Robert W. Woods in the early 1900’s AND again by Svante Arrhenius, himself.

IMHO it’s more than a little dishonest to state it was “debunked” by Woods considering that it’s actually true, and you’ve provided no evidence that Arrhenius “debunked” it, either.

I had to search to figure out what you were talking about because I’d never heard of Woods before and you, as usual, provided no references, and what I found was a devastating misunderstanding of the greenhouse effect, even in greenhouses:

4.bp.blogspot.com/_nOY5jaKJXHM/TClpp2LJfzI/AAAAAAAABLo/yfFt6AMvHJk/s1600/wood.jpg

Greenhouses work not because they trap outgoing IR but because they prevent convection – the warm air is physically prevented from escaping. Even Wikipedia could have explained this to you:

“The glass used for a greenhouse works as a barrier to air flow, and its effect is to trap energy within the greenhouse, which heats both the plants and the ground inside it. This warms the air near the ground, and this air is prevented from rising and flowing away. This can be demonstrated by opening a small window near the roof of a greenhouse: the temperature drops considerably.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse

Greenhouse gasses are so-called because the effect is to increase temperature, like a greenhouse does, but it’s only a name – the mechanism is completely different. (Energy doesn’t escape earth because the warm air simply blows away from the planet!) Therefore all his experiment shows is that he’s discovered something that everyone else already knew. Don’t read so much into a name.

It has been debunked by others - UNTIL, in about, the 1980- 1990’s and “Black Body” was added to it. So the “theory” you talk of - used now, is decades old…AND completely reliant upon accepting the “Black Body” and other equations presented now. Is this not true?

No, it’s not. Where are you getting this stuff from?

Here’s an educational documentary from 1958 that talks about how the CO2 being emitted by man into the atmosphere can make the earth warmer, and how even just a few degrees could melt the polar icecaps, submerge Miami, and even threaten life itself: youtube.com/watch?v=0lgzz-L7GFg I know you said you can’t see YouTube videos, but do yourself a favour and find a way to do so because you really need to open your eyes a little. Your view of history and your understanding of the science is incredibly distorted.

And you’re back to “Black Body” again. Do you even understand what that means? If you heat anything up, it emits radiation. The hotter it is, the shorter the wavelength of that radiation. Ever seen molten iron glowing red or orange? That’s blackbody radiation. Heat it up less and you won’t be able to see it’s hot because our eyes aren’t sensitive to infra-red, but you can feel it if you touch it. Heat it up more and it will change colour, becoming more and more blue until, if it’s hot enough, it actually goes ultraviolet.

You can tell how hot something is just by looking at its colour. The surface of the sun, for example, is at about 5,500 K. If your monitor has a “white balance” setting, it might describe the options in terms of “colour temperature”, and if you set it to 5,500 K then white will show as the same colour as a white page in direct sunlight. Set it to 8,000 K or thereabouts and it will look bluish (somewhat confusingly called “cool white”). Your digital camera may have a similar setting.

All of these are related to blackbody radiation, and it was the physics of blackbody radiation that led to Quantum Theory.

Now nothing is a perfect black body – it’s an idealised object, and anybody who thinks that showing something is not a perfect black body somehow affects the scientific underpinnings of AGW is seriously confused.

 

[JasonSB]

$4,600,000,000 for activities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in clmate change, an increase of $237,745,000 over the fiscal year 2009 …].

Not bad. It’s peanuts compared to how much the US Govt gave the banks that caused the GFC, or spent on the War in Iraq, but at least it’s something. Here’s the report on the bill:

thomas.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp111uRLDc&refer=&r_n=hr149.111&db_id=111&item=&sel=TOC_12163&

$2 billion for global climate change and sustainability, $27 billion for law enforcement activities. Wow.

You may also want to look at this:

"SecularAnimist – I did some research into grants for climate science vs. revenues for fossil fuel-related industries and found that in 2008 (the latest year for which all the data I needed was available), globally governments spent about $3.8 billion on researching climate science (and that’s a high estimate, given how much of that money goes to multi-purpose satellites) while the fossil fuel-related industries I could track had revenues of about $9 trillion, or 15% of the entire global economy. And that number was a minimum, not a max, given the way I did my analysis.

And yet Montford et al still claim that climate scientists are all in it for the grant money. If that were the case, they’d be far more likely to perform research for a corporate employer instead of working for government labs or in academia, given that there’s about 2400x more money available than there is in government or academia.

[Response: Indeed. It’s worth emphasising that **the vast bulk of the climate science money goes on observing platforms like satellites. For instance, NASA’s budget for Earth Science is around $2 billion dollars, and GISS accounts for about 0.5% of that. - gavin]" realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/comment-page-1/#comment-181607

So GISS gets about $10 million, which is about what I thought.

NOTE: This does not count the over 1.5 Million Dollars the US DOE has invested in CRU just in 2007 -2008.

Do you think the US DoE has been trying to corrupt CRU’s research by only giving it funding if it reaches desired conclusions, or are you going to put this on the other side of the ledger?

We have been funding CRU scientists according to Mr Jones, for some 25 years.

That’s how the process usually works, yes – government agencies get funding to promote research, they advertise grants, scientists apply for those grants outlining what they intend to do with the funding, and, if the government body thinks the research has value to the people, they award the grant. Successfully getting lots of grants is usually taken as an indication that the people are doing good research that has value to the people. Do you think being successful at grant applications is somehow something bad?

And you remember that I pointed out that the scientists themselves don’t actually get anything in addition to their normal salary when they win grants, don’t you?

Ahhhhh…This is not the CRU raw data? Now is it?

You seem to be a little confused.

You said:

7 Release and transparency - If this means ceasing the IPCC Climate Model under Multi National Guard and allow independent runs - backwards - So be it.

I pointed out that the climate models have been available for years, and gave you a link to a page conveniently pointing to them.

Then you respond by asking if that was the raw data used by CRU, presumably for their temperature reconstruction???

You made a false claim that the models used by the IPCC were under “Multi National Guard”. I proved it was false. End of story.

If you want to know about the raw data used by CRU, then actually yes, it happens that almost all of it is available from that same page. The bits that are not – those under confidentiality agreements – obviously aren’t, but as has been pointed out to you over and over and over again it makes no difference to the result.

Don’t like it anyway? Fine. Use GISS. It’s source code and all of its data is publicly available, also linked to on that very same page. So use that. I know, it shows a warming trend over the past decade twice as large as HadCRUT’s does, but it is all available, and that trend does agree better with the independent satellite record, so I’d be comfortable using it. Why aren’t you?

An interesting note: On Oct 20 2009 emails were leaked. Nov 24 2009 this data at your link ] was published and accessible to the general public.

Hardly news – that page was set up specifically to refute the claims being made that the code and data was not available. It’s a page of links to the existing information! Don’t believe me? That page links to the GISS climate model; here’s a copy of the climate model’s page archived on the 27th of February, 2004: web.archive.org/web/20040227013451/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/

“The frozen version that will be used for upcoming IPCC simulations and the controls for upcoming model description papers is denoted as ModelE1 …]. This code can be freely downloaded (as a 1.2MB gzip-ed tar file) from …]”

That’s from 2004. Here’s an archive of the EdCGM climate model from the 24th of November, 2005: web.archive.org/web/20051124042652/http://edgcm.columbia.edu/

They’ve been available for years. Anybody who thinks otherwise obviously isn’t very knowledgeable on the subject, agreed?

Before that, Scientists were referred to GHCN data

Err… That’s because that’s the data they use! It’s linked to on that same RealClimate page I linked you to.

 

[JasonSB]

A simple yes or no will d

OK, I’ll try.

Is it a fact that, lead powerful scientists right at the heart of the UN’s Climate Panel around the world, had conspired to thwart, for years, legitimate requests from other scientists for copies of their data and computer codes? Please don’t say part of the codes / data belonged to others - They could have released ALL but those… with an explanation as why some parts were missing - Allowing requesters the chance to petition for the missing parts from other sources. ]

No. (Note that I don’t disagree that Phil Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people, but that’s not what you asked.)

Is it a fact that, this falls under British Criminal Code?

No.

Is it a fact that, these scientist knew of the Freedom of Information Act? Yet chose to carry on?

Err – Yes, but given the first “No”, not really relevant.

Is it a fact that, because of the statuettes of limitations, these same scientists avoided being charged?

I assume you mean “statutes” rather than diminutive statues: Unknown. The ICO chose not to investigate a particular case because the statute of limitations meant charges could not be brought but without an investigation we don’t know if they would have brought charges or not, which is unfortunate.

Is it a fact that, by using UN’s Climate Panel projections, if we waited a decade without curbs on CO2 a warming of just 0.24 C would result? 388 ppmv CO2 in the Atmosphere now. We add 2ppmv a year. After ten years CO2 would be 408ppmv.
4.7IN 408/388 ] = 0.24C or 0.43F That’s if UN’ Climate Panels figures are correct. ]?Or to forestall less than half a F degree of future anthropogenic warming - it would be necessary to shut down the the whole global economy for a whole decade? Meaning no autos, planes, trains, hospitals, factories. practically no electricity all IN HOPES of saving less than half a F degree in temperature?

No.

Is it a fact that, CO2 levels are rising just one half of what the UN Climate Panel projects for 2100 - And that literature increasingly, supports around 0.5-1C, not the UN figures of 3.3C.? The first part requires a 1/2 divider alone - couple that with the differences between 0.5-1 AND UN’s 3.3C]

No.

That certainly saves a lot of time!

Now some yes/no questions for you:

Is it a fact that, even if some scientists chose not to share their code or data with others for any reason whatsoever, whether it was illegal or just plain rude, it in no way implies:

1. That their results are wrong.
2. That the IPCC reports are wrong.
3. That AGW is not real.

Is it a fact that the GISS code and data have been publicly available for years now, have been reimplemented by others using different programming languages, different data sets, and even different algorithms, and given the same result?

Is it a fact that the warming trend for the past decade shown by GISS, using publicly available source code and publicly available data, is double the warming trend shown by HadCRUT over the same period?

 

[4elise]

JasonSB

I have learned so much from your posts - thank you!

I have read a lot on the issue of confined animal feeding operations ‘factory farms’ impact on climate change and wonder if you think the science also supports a move to a plant based diet, as I have concluded - would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

 

[lynnvinc]

What is the Catholic Church’s position on climate change?

They say it is a serious problem, and we have to mitigate it, that it is everyone’s responsibility. And they’ve been saying that for over 20 years now.

However, I think they now need to make some statements on another serious problem – climate change denialism. That, it seems, is a much worse sin, since denialists not only refuse to mitigate climate change, but they also strive to block others from doing so. Theirs is not only a sin of greed, sloth, and gluttony, but of arrogant disregard for what the Church is telling us to do and for the overwhelming science that points to AGW.

I’m looking forward to such statements. It is the Church’s duty to guide our souls safely to heaven, so it would be remiss in not making such a statement to help the climate change denialists break out of the terrible sin.

 

[4elise]

They say it is a serious problem, and we have to mitigate it, that it is everyone’s responsibility. And they’ve been saying that for over 20 years now.

However, I think they now need to make some statements on another serious problem – climate change denialism. That, it seems, is a much worse sin, since denialists not only refuse to mitigate climate change, but they also strive to block others from doing so. Theirs is not only a sin of greed, sloth, and gluttony, but of arrogant disregard for what the Church is telling us to do and for the overwhelming science that points to AGW.

I’m looking forward to such statements. It is the Church’s duty to guide our souls safely to heaven, so it would be remiss in not making such a statement to help the climate change denialists break out of the terrible sin.

JasonSB has done a wonderful job addressing the issues of some who continue to think that AGW is some massive conspiracy by the science community funded by those who would profit by efforts to mitigate CO2 - The leaders of our Church continue to speak of personal responsibility and policy needed to mitigate climate change, but those who see some conspiracy think either the Church has also been duped, or the Church has no place in this discussion - The Church continues to speak to say this is an issue about PEOPLE and their quality of life not only in the US but around the world - and that is why it matters to the Church - and why it IS a moral issue.

While I agree that it seems irrational to deny the science, especially given the (name removed by moderator)ut that has gone on on this thread and others - I don’t think those here who continue to dispute AGW despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary - are necessarily guilty of greed, sloth or gluttony, ----- to me it seems like an arrogance to think one has ‘the’ truth despite the weight of scientific (name removed by moderator)ut. Now, the organized denialism that in fact is an attempt to influence opinion and get people to resist personal and policy changes - that I agree is motivated by greed - the desire to keep the status quo for their financial gain, yes - I completely agree that we need a stronger statement against such actions vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html - so much here Pope Benedict has addressed.

Blessings

 

[Ender]

Secondly, your assertion is simply wrong. Here is a comparison between the raw GHCN data and the adjusted GHCN data that HadCRUT, GISS, and NOAA all rely on:

Since I have no way to know where those numbers came from I have no way of knowing how valid they are. Given that for years requests for this data were stonewalled you’ll pardon my suspicion. Hansen specifically refused to release either the raw data or the algorithms he used to adjust it and the excuse given that it was too time consuming was absolute piffle.

The particular tree ring proxy data with the “decline” started experiencing it four decades before it was used for temperature reconstruction and the decline was clearly discussed in the original 1998 paper on the subject, where they advised against using post-1960 data because it was clearly wrong. It has been discussed in the scientific literature many times since as the “divergence problem”.

Right, so a process that is known to give results that “diverge” from reality when real temperatures are known is still somehow trustworthy to use where real temperatures are not available?

after 1960, the world has changed thanks to pollution, acid rain, etc., and that that could explain a sudden and novel decline in Briffa’s tree rings.

A lot of things *could *have happened but all of this strikes me as nothing more than adding epicycles on top of epicycles to explain why the theory is having such a hard time explaining the facts. Like the attempt to explain away the MWP by claiming it was probably just a phenomenon localized over Europe. That lasted 400 years.

So what’s better?

1. Exclude Briffa’s tree reconstruction…
2. Include Briffa’s tree reconstruction, but exclude…
3. Include Briffa’s tree reconstruction with …
   The IPCC chose #2

Whatever their choice, they supported the notion that neither the MWP nor the LIA occurred as meaningful periods of temperature change which, prior to it becoming a major inconvenience to AGW, were accepted as uncontroversial facts.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Many of the worst losses of human life in history were as a consequence of “considered” actions, like the starvation of tens of millions of people under Stalin and Mao and the execution of millions under Hitler. Do you not think those actions immoral?

You should stick to the scientific arguments; you are much less well informed on the moral ones. If I opposed AGW in the expectation that disasters would occur that would be immoral. If I oppose it in the belief that there will be no serious consequences, then, regardless of what happens, that choice would not be immoral. It is not immoral to be wrong.

If somebody does something that causes harm to others, especially after people warned them that it would, then I consider it immoral regardless of how much they thought about it or whether they found the arguments convincing. The actual outcome is what matters.

Actually, the outcome is nearly irrelevant. What usually matters is the intent behind the act, what occasionally matters is the nature of the act (if it is intrinsically evil), but what matters not at all is the outcome. That may mitigate or increase ones moral responsibility but it does not change the moral nature of the act. That is consequentialism, not Catholicism.

If you are right and they are wrong then you have nothing to worry about; but if you are wrong and they are right, you can’t hide behind the claim that “you thought about it”.

You really need to recognize that it is not a sin to make a mistake.

In fact, to me, that actually makes it worse, and the law agrees – penalties for premeditated murder are often harsher than the penalties for the death of another resulting from a sudden act of irrationality.

What is irrational is this example. Again, “I don’t believe the consequences will be bad” is an entirely different scenario from “I hope the consequences will be bad” or even “I don’t care if they are bad.”

And so far I have yet to see you present any actual reasons for being unconvinced of the science behind AGW or for your claims regarding the cost and effectiveness of action.

From the AGW crowd we have seen one self-serving, dissembling statement after another. If their position was correct they should be able to defend it honestly and even Kyoto supporters acknowledged that if their targets were met the difference in 100 years would be only a few tenths of a degree.

You can say that, but that’s a completely different meaning for the word “moral” to the one I use.

I’m sure it is. You probably use it in the same sense as 4elise and lynnvinc use it, but they are just as mistaken as you.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Let’s see what they said first, shall we?

"Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs.

What, precisely, do you object to?

I object to the same thing Dr. Landsea objected to when he terminated his association with the IPCC: there is insufficient scientific basis for such a conclusion. As of 2005 when he resigned (and finally had to sue the IPCC to remove his name as being associated with them) there was no scientific study showing a reliable long-term trend between global warming and increased intensity of tropical hurricanes. Political AGW zealots made a lot out of this seemingly innocuous passage when Katrina hit. As he said in his open letter explaining his resignation:

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.

You keep saying things like this but keep failing to provide any support.

The programmer comments in the Harry_Read_Me file are pretty descriptive of what was going on.

*getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been introduced, so many false references… so many changes that aren’t documented. *

I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations

I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.

Their code and data was so was so messed up even they couldn’t reproduce their modifications. This programmer had been working for about three years on this project and that last comment (above) was near the bottom of the file. For you to claim that some outside group reproduced the CRU data in two days is farcical.

Ender

 

[JasonSB]

Since I have no way to know where those numbers came from I have no way of knowing how valid they are.

How can you have no way of knowing where numbers come from when I have explicity told you what they are? It’s even written on the graph!

If this represents how easily you give up trying to obtain information that you’re afraid might force you to reconsider it’s not suprising that you’ve been able to maintain your position this long.

“There are none so blind as those, that will not see.”

Given that for years requests for this data were stonewalled you’ll pardon my suspicion. Hansen specifically refused to release either the raw data or the algorithms he used to adjust it and the excuse given that it was too time consuming was absolute piffle.

Given the amount of effort you’ve displayed so far in actually seeking the truth the following information probably won’t help, but:

GISS source code has been available since the 11th of September, 2007:

web.archive.org/web/20070911181959/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/

The data it uses has been available since at least May 1997:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.temperature.readme

(No doubt it was available before then as well, that’s just when version 2 came out.)

The description of how they derive the global temperature anomaly was published in 1987:

pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1987/Hansen_Lebedeff.html

The improvements they made to their algorithms were described in 1999 and 2001:

pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1999/Hansen_etal.html

pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Hansen_etal.html

They have always used the raw data publicly available to anyone, and they’ve always described how they processed the raw data. But if you think it’s “absolute piffle” that they didn’t have the time to release the source code, why aren’t you up in arms about the fact that Spencer and Christy still have not released their source code because last time they tried, “our code was so complicated that the transfer was eventually given up after six months”? magicjava.blogspot.com/2010/02/dr-john-christy-on-uah-source-code.html

Where is your moral outrage? Your indignation? Your accusations that their claims they spent six months trying to do this before and gave up are “absolute piffle”???

Oh, that’s right – Spencer and Christy are “on your side” so let’s complain about what Hanson used to say before they went to the trouble of actually releasing their source code!

And, of course, now that GISS’s source code has been out for three years and their results have been widely reproduced and they’ve been “audited” and nothing untoward was found, just keep on dismissing it anyway on the basis of suspicion rather than actual fact.

Right, so a process that is known to give results that “diverge” from reality when real temperatures are known is still somehow trustworthy to use where real temperatures are not available?

I repeat: “Maybe that’s a valid point to make, but it ignores the fact that before 1960, the same data agrees well with all the other proxy measures as well as the instrumental record where they overlap, so we have no reason to doubt it for that period, and that after 1960, the world has changed thanks to pollution, acid rain, etc., and that that could explain a sudden and novel decline in Briffa’s tree rings.”

To which I’ll just add that not all tree rings show the same post-1960 decline that Briffa’s do, and they line up before 1960 just fine.

But, again, if you still don’t like it, don’t use it:

http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7420/fig221nobriffa.gif

Problem solved.

A lot of things *could *have happened but all of this strikes me as nothing more than adding epicycles on top of epicycles to explain why the theory is having such a hard time explaining the facts.

The theory is having no problems at all explaining facts. Most of the temperature rise of the past 150 years can be explained perfectly by the rise in CO2 that has occurred during that time. The fact that tree rings don’t always reflect just temperature doesn’t mean it’s not warming!

Like the attempt to explain away the MWP by claiming it was probably just a phenomenon localized over Europe. That lasted 400 years.

The existence of a MWP is only known from proxy records.

Whatever their choice, they supported the notion that neither the MWP nor the LIA occurred as meaningful periods of temperature change which, prior to it becoming a major inconvenience to AGW, were accepted as uncontroversial facts.

Prior to anybody actually making a serious attempt to reconstruct global temperatures the only reconstruction that existed was done in the 1960s by Hubert Lamb based on Central England temperatures with no thermometer calibration (heck, in the early days they actually kept the thermometers indoors to avoid having to go out in the cold weather!!!) and proxies. For this reason it was shown in the first IPCC report as a schematic, as we have already discussed. People changed their minds because new information emerged. That’s how it’s supposed to work!

The idea that that reconstruction was correct and all subsequent reconstructions using data from all over the globe and combining tree rings, borehole temperatures, isotope analyses of ice cores, coral growth, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, fossils, and glacier length records are somehow less accurate can only be explained by a desire to only accept evidence that supports a preconceived notion and reject anything else. Don’t you agree?

 

[kimmielittle]

No. (Note that I don’t disagree that Phil Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people, but that’s not what you asked.)
Question was: **Is it a fact that, lead powerful scientists right at the heart of the UN’s Climate Panel around the world, had conspired to thwart, for years, legitimate requests from other scientists for copies of their data and computer codes? **

You said no
Only TWO emails here for brevity’s sake:

From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008 /MANN@XXX.EDU/P.JONES@XXXX.UK
*Mike, *
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
*Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. *
*Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. *
*We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. *
*I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!! *
*Cheers *
*Phil:
*

1212063122.txt

From: Phil Jones To: mann@xxx.edu
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
Date: Mon Feb 21 16:28:32 2005
Cc: “raymond s. bradley” , “Malcolm Hughes” /MHUGHES@XXX.EDU/RBRADLEY@XXX.EDU/P.JONES@XXXX.UK
*Mike, Ray and Malcolm, *
*The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here ! Maybe we can use this to our advantage to get the series updated ! *
*Odd idea to update the proxies with satellite estimates of the lower troposphere rather than surface data !. Odder still that they don’t realise that Moberg et al used the Jones and Moberg updated series ! *
*Francis Zwiers is till onside. He said that PC1s produce hockey sticks. He stressed that the late 20th century is the warmest of the millennium, but Regaldo didn’t bother
with that. Also ignored Francis’ comment about all the other series looking similar to MBH. *
*The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate ! *
*Cheers *
*Phil *
*PS **I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. ***
Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !

Freedom of Information is a Law in UK

Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act 2000 gives everyone the right to access information held by public authorities.

dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-information/

Definition of criminal Conspiracy UK

Conspiracy

The essential element of the crime of conspiracy is the agreement by two or more people to carry out a criminal act. Even if nothing is done in furtherance of the agreement, the offence of conspiracy is complete.
The actus reus is the agreement. This cannot be a mere mental operation; it must involve spoken or written words or other overt acts. If the defendant repents and withdraws immediately after the agreement has been concluded, s/he is still guilty of the offence.
cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/inchoate_offences/

The Intent is all it takes…

It seems there might be a statute of limitations on the FOI - BUT the Criminal offense of Conspiracy would still be in effect.

1’ They know of FOI as a Government law
2: They agree to thwart this law Many times ]

This equals by UK Definition of criminal Conspiracy laws. …a conspiracy.

Mr Mann would be under USA Laws. Which is governed by this

While intent is key in any federal conspiracy case, only ** “general intent”** to violate the law is necessary; proof of the defendants’ specific intent to violate the law is not needed, only an agreement to engage in an illegal act.

definitions.uslegal.com/c/conspiracy/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_%28crime%29

Will post more later - maybe tomorrow Lots of homework ]

 

[JasonSB]

I object to the same thing Dr. Landsea objected to when he terminated his association with the IPCC: there is insufficient scientific basis for such a conclusion.

I am not sufficiently qualified in the field to judge whether Landsea is right about the IPCC report in relation to tropical cyclones or not, but RealClimate has a pretty detailed update on the current state of knowledge that Landsea is acknowledged for feedback on: realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/06/atlantic-tropical-cyclone-records-trends-and-ephemerality/

I find the suggestion that higher ocean temperatures are likely to lead to more intense cyclones to be wholly plausible, and the statement that the IPCC actually made seems unobjectionable. Even Landsea himself seems to think that way, given this conclusion from a paper he recently co-authored:

“These improvements have encouraged us to raise our confidence levels concerning several aspects of cyclone-activity projections. These include our assessment that tropical cyclone frequency is likely to either decrease or remain essentially the same. Despite this lack of an increase in total storm count, we project that a future increase in the globally averaged frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones is more likely than not — a higher confidence level than possible at our previous assessment” ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/ngeo_779_MAR10_-_print_issue.pdf

Was his objection that the use of the word “likely” was unjustified on the evidence at the time? How does that falsify AGW?

Political AGW zealots made a lot out of this seemingly innocuous passage when Katrina hit.

So you agree that the passage seems innocuous? I don’t see how the science can be discredited by what “political AGW zealots” make of it. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. That would be like discrediting Christianity based on what some political zealots throughout history have justified based on passages from the Bible.

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.

I haven’t seen anything to support that conclusion, but given the wishy-washy nature of the wording that they actually used it seems like a strong reaction.

The programmer comments in the Harry_Read_Me file are pretty descriptive of what was going on.

Do you have any experience in software development? Seriously, if you ever meet a skilled programmer who didn’t think everyone who wrote any of the code that he now has to work on was a complete idiot then you’ve found a very rare individual indeed.

And complaining about the fact that everyone is using different file formats and he has to somehow figure everything out is part of the research effort – a pretty tedious and uninteresting part of it, but not exactly technically difficult.

*getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been introduced, so many false references… so many changes that aren’t documented. *

This is precisely why the researchers had to come up with techniques to figure out what actually happened from the raw data. Nobody knew that people would some day be trying to compare their readings over a long period of time to detect climate change so they didn’t care about recording this kind of information.

The fact remains, however, that researchers have been able to do this, and get consistent results using all sorts of different data sets. Part of the adjustment process is to try to figure this out, and the methods used have been documented for decades and the source code for doing it has been available for years.

Their code and data was so was so messed up even they couldn’t reproduce their modifications. This programmer had been working for about three years on this project and that last comment (above) was near the bottom of the file. For you to claim that some outside group reproduced the CRU data in two days is farcical.

For you to claim that it’s farcical in the face of the obvious fact that they did is just bizarre:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/5417/russelln.png

That’s their own code using raw temperature data from GHCN (blue), their own code using adjusted data from GHCN (yellow), their own code using unadjusted data from NCAR, and HadCRUT’s temperature record (black). If you didn’t know which colour represented which, could you distinguish HadCRUT’s from the others? Could you pick which ones are “adjusted” and which ones are “raw”?

At some point, a refusal to accept the facts in front of you undermines your claims to be making a “considered” decision and thereby threatens even your own definition of “morality”.

Just because programmers complain about how hard their job is doesn’t mean that the result is wrong.

And if you think you can judge whether something actually gives the right results or not based on the comments, I strongly suggest you read this: scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/quote_mining_code.php#comment-2116172

Those comments are taken from the source code of the operating system used by the computer that hosts this forum. Based on your logic I can now show that operating systems cannot possibly work and this forum cannot possibly exist.

 

[JasonSB]

You said no

That’s right, and I was fully aware of those emails. So you might want to go back and look at the question you asked and how I responded – I completely agree that Phil Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people.

Freedom of Information is a Law in UK

Which obviously has exceptions:

ico.gov.uk/home/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information/guidance.aspx#exeguidance

And the emails clearly reveal that they held discussions with the Information Commissioner and UAE’s FOI officer to ensure that they complied with the law and refused to release information on the advice that they received.

The rest of your line of reasoning presupposes that they violated the law, which nobody has established. You need to show that they actually did something wrong before you can talk about “conspiracies”.

And, to be relevant to the topic at hand, you have to show how this affects the theory of AGW in any way whatsoever, given that their actual results are consistent with everybody else’s, and others have been releasing their source code and data for years.

And as I said before, this idea that all source code and data must be made publicly available is relatively new, and Spencer and Christy still haven’t released their source code and data. Why aren’t you complaining about UAH? Why aren’t you accusing them of fraud? Where are all the FOIA requests to them? Why act like CRU’s intransigence is such a big deal when there is such a glaring and obvious blind spot? Perhaps you’ll address those questions when you get around to replying.

 

[kimmielittle]

That’s right, and I was fully aware of those emails. So you might want to go back and look at the question you asked and how I responded – I completely agree that Phil Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people.

Since when does FOI apply only to the AGW camp?

REPEATING:

Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act 2000 gives **everyone **the right to access information held by public authorities.

dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-information/

And the emails clearly reveal that they held discussions with the Information Commissioner and UAE’s FOI officer to ensure that they complied with the law and refused to release information on the advice that they received.

That isn’t what the emails say.

*Email 1182255717.txt
*
Phil Jones said the following on 6/19/2007 4:22 AM: NOTE THIS DATE

*Wei-Chyung and Tom, *
*The Climate Audit web site has a new thread on the Jones et al. (1990) paper, with lots of quotes from Keenan. So they may not be going to submit something to Albany. Well may be?!? *
*Just agreed to review a paper by Ren et al. for JGR. This refers to a paper on urbanization effects in China, which may be in press in J. Climate. I say ‘may be’ as Ren isn’t that clear about this in the text, references and responses to earlier reviews. Have requested JGR get a copy a copy of this in order to do the review.In the meantime attaching this paper by Ren et al. on urbanization at two sites in China.Nothing much else to say except: *
***1. Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit ***
***.2. Had an email from David Jones of BMRC, Melbourne. He said they are ignoring anybody who has dealings with CA, as there are threads on it about Australian sites. ***
*3. CA is in dispute with IPCC (Susan Solomon and Martin Manning) about the availability of the responses to reviewer’s at the various stages of the AR4 drafts. They are most interested here re Ch 6 on paleo. *
*Cheers *
*Phil
*

----------------------------
*Options appear to be: *
*Send them the data *
*Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s. *
Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Here is what the ICO said:

In a statement, Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said: “The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the **Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.” **

AND according to the date on the above email…AEU was sought out because of the Wang problem
informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm
You know the one after the review of Mr. Wang…Mr.Wigley said this to Mr Jones

From Prof Tom Wigley to Jones – 4 May 2009
“I have always thought W-C W [Wang] was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here … Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it’s not too late? I realise that Keenan is just a troublemaker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I am concerned because all this happened under my watch as director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me.”

The rest of your line of reasoning presupposes that they violated the law, which nobody has established. You need to show that they actually did something wrong before you can talk about “conspiracies”.

According to ICO they did…And as I’ve shown, conspiring intent, is shown.

And, to be relevant to the topic at hand, you have to show how this affects the theory of AGW in any way whatsoever, given that their actual results are consistent with everybody else’s, and others have been releasing their source code and data for years.

Their records could show anything As Shown in the Jones - Wang 1990 ]. It’s not for me to disprove your falsifiability hypothesis. As far as I’m concerned - You started with your Hypothesis and fed your models based upon that hypothesis.

As far as if it’s warming or cooling…I have seen nothing supported by IPCC that would mitigate 1C of temperature OR save the environment Show me where my tax money is actually doing something AND it won’t make any difference to me about who’s right or wrong -

THAT - I will support!

 

[kimmielittle]

And as I said before, this idea that all source code and data must be made publicly available is relatively new, and Spencer and Christy still haven’t released their source code and data. Why aren’t you complaining about UAH? Why aren’t you accusing them of fraud? Where are all the FOIA requests to them? Why act like CRU’s intransigence is such a big deal when there is such a glaring and obvious blind spot? Perhaps you’ll address those questions when you get around to replying.

Another feeble try?

I have supported the release of ALL DATA AND CODES - For quite awhile now.

BUT I think you are referring to these FOI requests that have nothing to do with Data or Codes.

The FOIA filings request a listing of all grants in support of research, copies of conflict of interest and outside income disclosures, copies of all email sent and received, and copies of CVs on file with the institutions.

 

[lynnvinc]

While I agree that it seems irrational to deny the science, especially given the (name removed by moderator)ut that has gone on on this thread and others - I don’t think those here who continue to dispute AGW despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary - are necessarily guilty of greed, sloth or gluttony

I sort of meant those sins to apply to those who more or less accept AGW, but are many times guilty of sloth and gluttony (at least that describes me to a tee ), tho I guess greed doesn’t really fit here, since mitigating AGW saves money – so maybe “profligacy” would be the more appropriate sin.

As for the denialists, it’s really hard to say what is influencing & motivating them (or whether some secretly accept AGW, but have nefarious motives for denying it – such as the Exxon-funded folks) – but something is going very wrong there, esp when you consider that we should be acting with prudence & mitigating AGW, even if we have lots of doubts about its validity. So maybe “arrogance” is not the appropriate sin, but rather whatever is the opposite of prudence.

And, of course, I am no judge of anyone, especially when it comes to spiritual matters, and I’m no theologian by any means. I know my own short-comings & sins to some extent. I’m just thinking that perhaps their souls may be in jeopardy, and it would be the Church’s duty to alert them.

It sort of looks like we (humanity) may be committed to triggering climate hysteresis and a very great die out of life on earth, and perhaps even runaway warming as on Venus and a complete die out of life on earth. But there is still heaven to look forward to (or the other place ).

Forgiveness & redemption are ever available to us all…

 

[4elise]

I sort of meant those sins to apply to those who more or less accept AGW, but are many times guilty of sloth and gluttony (at least that describes me to a tee ), tho I guess greed doesn’t really fit here, since mitigating AGW saves money – so maybe “profligacy” would be the more appropriate sin.

As for the denialists, it’s really hard to say what is influencing & motivating them (or whether some secretly accept AGW, but have nefarious motives for denying it – such as the Exxon-funded folks) – but something is going very wrong there, esp when you consider that we should be acting with prudence & mitigating AGW, even if we have lots of doubts about its validity. So maybe “arrogance” is not the appropriate sin, but rather whatever is the opposite of prudence.

And, of course, I am no judge of anyone, especially when it comes to spiritual matters, and I’m no theologian by any means. I know my own short-comings & sins to some extent. I’m just thinking that perhaps their souls may be in jeopardy, and it would be the Church’s duty to alert them.

It sort of looks like we (humanity) may be committed to triggering climate hysteresis and a very great die out of life on earth, and perhaps even runaway warming as on Venus and a complete die out of life on earth. But there is still heaven to look forward to (or the other place ).

Forgiveness & redemption are ever available to us all…

Amen! Like you I don’t want to judge anyone - but it continues to baffle me that when the Church leadership (Holy Father and the Bishops) has spoken in such a consistent way on what we need to do - keep the needs of the poor at the heart of the discussion and decisions - on this issue many Catholics are willing to say, “well the Church is just giving an opinion” - yet on other matters are always willing to hold up the flag of Church fidelity - and they are often the first ones to say one can not be a cafeteria Catholic? So - yes, I do wish the Church’s teaching on what we need to do as individuals in terms of individual actions, and support specific policies, to mitigate climate change would be more often spoken of and more widely accepted… Blessings

 

[kimmielittle]

And as I said before, this idea that all source code and data must be made publicly available is relatively new, and Spencer and Christy still haven’t released their source code and data. Why aren’t you complaining about UAH?Why aren’t you accusing them of fraud? Where are all the FOIA requests to them? Why act like CRU’s intransigence is such a big deal when there is such a glaring and obvious blind spot? Perhaps you’ll address those questions when you get around to replying.

Your Scientific mind / thought processes here, seem… IMHO, at a lapse.

Albeit Fraud and Conspiracy oft times go hand in hand they are separate.

I will reserve my charge of fraud, to things like the IPCC’s issuance of false claims made to support a desired outcome. Although , I believe, Mr. Wang made some rather disturbing claims as to having records available.

In short: my last few posts have been about conspiracy to thwart FOI requests. Not fraud, have they not?

 

[4elise]

JasonSB - perhaps some of those who continue to counter might look to Matthew 7:5 -

• Suspecting the scientists of conspiracy / yet not seeing same in those who profit from maintaining the status quo
• Refusing to believe the copious evidence that points to man made climate change / yet willing to accept anything at all that points to something else, from it is not man made, it is not as bad as reported, or whatever - as long as we don’t need to do anything to change
• Condemning the lack of release of documents (although you have repeatedly clarified that) yet forgiving those who support their position for same - responding with circular logic - *and when all else fails, resort to impuning your obvious superior scientific background, * in their not so humble opinion.

:tiphat:I am so grateful for the thorough, patient, way you have responded on this thread.
Blessings