"Climate Change - Doubts, Denials, Scepticism, and Politics"

[piscator]

for all the Canadians in this thread...

[Reverend Blair]

Unfortunately you'll need that tree in the coming years. There are probably some hosehold goods you could tie together though, recycling and all.

Er, it's the remnants of a tree that died and we had to cut down. Right now it's a lawn ornament.

I'm curious if the Amish life style is fully sustainble without an industrial base....

Mostly, I think. They'd depend a lot less on outside commerce, but their farming methods are sustainable enough that they could feed and clothe themselves. It's exactly the kind of lifestyle I'd like to avoid though.

but aren't you a tad far north for oxen?

Nah, my grandfather farmed with oxen and horses. Hey, maybe that's why he liked his trips to Cuba and Mexico so much...reminded him of his youth.

Moreover, "depleting all our rsources" isn't something that would happen overnight, it would only result from a long very slow decline ... creating a period when the evidence for it happening would become ever more overwhelming and eventually force us to act, to declare martial law or whatever would be necessary to alter the landscape of resource consumption in dramatic ways so that we didn't end up "depleting all our resources." Humans may be dumb but they're not stupido.

Oh? What do you suppose the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island was thinking?

The historical evidence, as well as natural analogs like the coyote/rabbit relationship also contradict the long, slow decline scenario.

What generally happens is that everything seems to be normal, even good, until a tipping point gets passed and a rather rapid decline begins. Also, the resource decline would likely go something like, "Don't worry, everything is fine," progressing to, "Oops, there's still resources, but nobody can afford them but the very wealthy," and ending with, "Fuck you, it's my potato and you can't have it."

We're in the midst of pretty brutal progress trap, Fact Man. We're already seeing ecological collapse. We're dependent on technology that most of us don't understand. We have social and economic structures that aren't sustainable. Our political structures are dictated by that unsustainable economic structure.

I don't expect that either of us will be around to see what really happens, but I wouldn't want to be twenty right now.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

OK, thanks for the limks by PM Macdoc. I am now skeptical of my AGW skepticism.

Anyway, that's not the reason for this post..... I have had a thunk about aeroplanes.

Is the CO2 held inside the troposphere? If so, can the airliners fly in the stratosphere,(I know some planes can) and dump their emissions in that part? Would that reduce the CO2 in the troposhere, and make some difference?

OK, reading back through that it sounds kinda silly. Just confirm that it is silly, please!

[Coito ergo sum]

Strange. It's like we privately agree that when these scientists say the end of the world is nigh, they don't mean it, not literally, but are just scaring us for our own good. Or that they do mean it, but are frankly batty.

After all, it's not as if even Dark Greens have resolved never to breed, to thus spare their child the horror of spending their shortened life in terror at the doom to come.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/our ... 5881064383

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.


“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.

[Clinton Huxley]

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News

From the post above. Re the Heartland Institute....

From Wiki...

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[25] Greenpeace reported that the Heartland Institute received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[14] By 2008, ExxonMobil had stopped funding to Heartland.[dubious – discuss] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[25]
The Heartland Institute has also received funding and support from the tobacco company Philip Morris.[15]

[Coito ergo sum]

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News

From the post above. Re the Heartland Institute....

From Wiki...

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[25] Greenpeace reported that the Heartland Institute received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[14] By 2008, ExxonMobil had stopped funding to Heartland.[dubious – discuss] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[25]
The Heartland Institute has also received funding and support from the tobacco company Philip Morris.[15]

Bias noted. Question remains: are the quotes in his article accurate? We'll see.

Time Magazine's take on it -

There are exactly two lessons I can immediately draw from what's being called Climategate 2, the apparent hack and release of thousands of emails between climate scientists.
One: get a better email password! This cache of emails was taken from the hard drives of the CLimatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, most likely in the same theft that netted the thousands of emails released right before the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago. All of this drama—and the negative impact the original Climategate had on the global perception of climate science—might have been avoided with some decent digital cryptography. So right now, dear reader, immediately go read James Fallows's piece on email hacking in the Atlantic. (I'll wait.) And then read this Slate post on how to easily come up with unbreakable passwords.
Two: the good constables of Norfolk, who have been investing at the hack at East Anglia, are in no danger of giving Sherlock Holmes a run for his money. Seriously, it's been two years since the original Climategate, and as Richard Black points out in the BBC, they've apparently got bupkis, or whatever the British equivalent of that would be. And the investigation doesn't exactly seem to be on the frontburner—as Black writes, the police have spent all of $8,843 on the investigation.
Otherwise the new batch of emails seem to add little to what was raised two years ago. Climate scientists—especially when you quote selectively from emails they think are not for public viewing—can be hypersensitive to criticism and clannish. Within the climate science world, there are clearly differences of opinions on aspects of climate science, on the certainty of models and on the confidence we can have in any sweeping assessment of global warming. Those differences come out in the emails, sometimes very bluntly—but that to me isn't evidence of some kind of international conspiracy, but rather the not always pretty process of science and collective decision-making happening in real time.
Here's an example: in the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin quotes one of the hacked emails:
An official from the U.K. Met Office [Peter Thorne], a scientific organization which analyzes the climate, writes to the Climate Research Unit's then-director Phil Jones at one point: “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]”
Later, the official adds, “I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”
That might sound bad, although again, this appears to be part of a back-and-forth. But as Jocelyn Fong of the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters writes, these emails were sent in February 2005 and were discussing a first draft of what would become part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment. The final version of the chapter the two scientists were quarreling about seemed to reflect Thorne's concerns, and cited his research several times. Isn't that what this process supposed to be about?
Of courses, groups like Climate Progress and the Union for Concerned Scientists were quick to assure everyone that there was nothing to see in the emails—a little too quick, given that the hack was only published this morning and contained more than 5,000 emails. And of course, they instantly went on the offensive against reporters writing just about anything on the emails. It's true that some media outlets blew the original Climategate emails out of proportion, and that others will no doubt do so this time around. (Hello, Fox News! There you are, Daily Telegraph!) One thing I'm sure the latest email controversy will do is reinforce the belief among many in the environmental community that messaging—and the media—is the real reason the world has failed to get more than a foothold on climate policy. As an MSMember, I'm biased, but that explanation has never worked for me.
And as Andrew Revkin points out on Dot Earth, there were legitimate concerns raised in the original emails about the IPCC process—and how closed it could be to dissenting voices. But inquiry after inquiry showed that there was little more to the emails than that, and cleared scientists involved in the imbroglio like Michael Mann. The more balanced recent IPCC report on natural disasters had a wider variety of voices, and pleased even longtime critics. Ultimately, the emails are a sideshow—and the unhappy result that's almost certainly to come at the UN climate summit in Durban, which begins next week, will have little to do with them. But that's for later.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/1 ... z1ejaJhYPv

[Clinton Huxley]

Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait's take on it....

More ado about nothing again...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... ing-again/

[Tero]

If you label it Climate Gate Scandal, it must be a scandal.

Reminds me of "teach the controversy" of evolution.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/ Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular! (says the linked blog)

[Seth]

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[Clinton Huxley]

If you label it Climate Gate Scandal, it must be a scandal.

Reminds me of "teach the controversy" of evolution.

Yep, with the denialists in the role of Michael Behe

[Santa_Claus]

Climate Scientology - Woo for the 21st Century.

I might start a register for those willing to be first in line for power cuts. and another for those willing to chip in to pay for Green "Technology"

My bet is both will be short lists

[Seth]

Climate Scientology - Woo for the 21st Century.

You can't use the word "Scientology™" it's a trademark of the Church of Scientology™ and they will hunt you down and shove a probe up your ass and "clear" you for messing with their woo.

How about "Climate Scientificalness"? Or "Climate Scientificness"?

I might start a register for those willing to be first in line for power cuts. and another for those willing to chip in to pay for Green "Technology"

Start a list for those willing to move out into wattle-and-daub huts, hair-shirts and grubbing for roots with a pointy stick while you're at it.

I think we should cross-correlate lists of anyone who has ever supported the "anthropogenic global warming" canard with driver's licenses, carbon-based heat and cooking fuel sources, non-natural zero-carbon footprint clothing and goods purchases and make it illegal to advocate anthropogenic global warming while one's personal CO2 footprint is not "carbon neutral."

Violations would involve revocation of driver's licenses, shutting off of carbon-based utilities, seizure of all non-carbon-neutral goods, and a plastic bag over the head to contain CO2 emissions.

My bet is both will be short lists

Why let them choose? They want to choose for us, so let's choose for them.

[Schneibster]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... ng-debate/

The Heartland Institute was the one I caught doing incestuous linking with Inhofe; Inhofe makes a ridiculous claim, links to an article on their site as evidence, the article he links to points to a different article on his site, which points to yet another article on their site, which makes the claim without any link to evidence anywhere nor any pointer toward any source whatsoever.

He thinks climate change is because "we're recovering from the Little Ice Age," which Media Matters characterizes as like "believing basketballs bounce because they're 'recovering from falling.'" http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111010006?frontpage My only quibble with Media Matters is that it's more like believing basketballs sit on the ground for a few hundred years before they bounce.

This individual is an idiot.