They Never Learn

Climate Scientist Threatens Boycott of NYT Reporter

Roger Pielke Jr

h/t Boballab

A Different Kind of Hide the Decline

This is a serious one which has not been covered yet.

In the past year, there has been substantial discussion on CA, WUWT, tAV and other blogs about the filter types used to present temperature data. We evil deniers found that “scientists” have been stiffening the ends of their filters to make sure that the uptrends in graphs look as scary as possible. I personally have been censored from advocate global warming blogs for even suggesting that the practice was be going on. Now we have PROOF that it’s been colluded for.

I’m not sure if readers get the fact that scientists were not speaking openly by email but have been careful not to reveal their bias (especially in the more recent emails). Just not as careful as if talking to reporters. Like other smart scientists, Michael Mann was careful throughout the emials not to reveal his position on these things. After all, if guy’s like Mann knowingly create artificial hockeysticks for a living, you don’t expect them to write it down.

He went a bit too far in this email though.

Global Warming on the Moon?

..

We’ll in my recent post on why some fraction of global warming is absolutely real, I made the comment that if people wanted to see whether the blackbody equations presented by Lucia hold up reasonably well to a no-atmosphere planet in earth levels of sunlight they could simply look at the moon. There has been a bit of discussion on it so I did the work myself.

First I had to find the lunar albedo it turns out that the value is 0.078. I had no idea the moon was dark material, blogging is fun when you learn stuff like that. Link for the data is here.

So using the amazingly simple approximations by Lucia, I plugged in the same values of solar energy as earth. After all the moon is closer to the sun and farther from the sun exactly half of the time. I calculate an average temperature of 273K (according to the above).

The average day temperature and average night temperature are given at this link. It’s in degrees C so we need to add
is 273+107 = 380K in the day and 273-153 = 120K at night for a net average of 250K. This is 23C cooler than a simple calculation would demonstrate and if the same result was made on a planet with an atmosphere we would give have the impression that there was 23 C created by greenhouse gasses. However, the lunar surface has a great deal more variance in temperature than the earth which creates substantially more error in the simple calculation.

If someone is interested in working the math to take into account non-linearity of temperature distributions, it would make an interesting post. It’s Sunday though, and I think some fun is in order.

Hurricanes

This is an interesting exchange. I was going to excerpt parts but everyone’s points need to be read. Dr. Christy was pointing out that hurricanes have not grown detectably worse or stronger – according to the evil data. He got a bit of a reaction. He also ended up pointing out that the gatekeepers were preventing non-conforming science from being included in the IPCC process.

The Right Review

I haven’t seen this group highlighted. While not as dramatic as hide the decline it’s pretty plain that those chosen are on the team. It’s hard for me to imagine that Ben Santer would give any warming paper an unbiased review.

From: Phil Jones
To: Kevin Trenberth
, Grant Foster
Subject: Re: ENSO blamed over warming – paper in JGR
Date: Wed Aug 5 16:14:34 2009
Cc: “J. Salinger” , James Annan , b.mullan@niwa.co.nz, Gavin Schmidt , Mike Mann , j.renwick@niwa.co.nz

Hi all,
Agree with Kevin that Tom Karl has too much to do. Tom Wigley is semi
retired and like Mike Wallace may not be responsive to requests from JGR.
We have Ben Santer in common ! Dave Thompson is a good suggestion.
I’d go for one of Tom Peterson or Dave Easterling.
To get a spread, I’d go with 3 US, One Australian and one in Europe.
So Neville Nicholls and David Parker.
All of them know the sorts of things to say – about our comment and
the awful original, without any prompting.

Cheers
Phil

Shaken

Alright, now that we’ve established that Jeff Id is not anti-science (again) not a denier (again) we can discuss a bit of what’s happened these past two weeks. I’m feeling a little reflective this Saturday and pretty well stunned by what has happened.

The Air Vent started at the tail end of July 2008. This little blog has grown continually since that time as I and the amazing guest posts became interested in one paper after another. JeffC, RyanO, NicL, Tony Brown, Dr. Weinstien, DeWitt, Lucy and many others. The time has been entertaining as we have gradually been exposed to more and more science here. Mistakes have been made and admitted to, differences of opinion have been argued to the ends of their points. I have learned continually because of the commenters as well as the papers.

I’ve been vocal and demanding of scientists here at this little blog. Demanding Dr. Steig release his Antarctic code and data – even publicly calling him a liar when he claimed it was available. I’ve shown Mann’s absolutely corrupt papers on hockeysticks, pointed out that I believe it was intentionally bad. I’ve basically screamed at a scientist who claimed that, of the 40% shrinkage in average fish size from some rivers this century, he was able to detect that 2% of the shrinkage was due to global warming. I emailed him personally to tell him he was a L@#%. How about the time when Steve McIntyre found Mann used data upside down, Yamal hockeysticization by Dr. Briffa at CA or Steig et al warming of the Antarctic is just temperature smearing.

This blog is only a year and a few months old – end of July 08. The Air Vent has grown steadily over that time. The blog was well known enough that climate science blogs like Real Climate wouldn’t allow any comments from me through. What’s more, all comments deriding tAV stopped at RC. In fact any mention of the Air Vent vanished from both Foster’s blog and RC for several months. Probably because I’m a denier, a non supporter of the agenda, a non-advocate. What’s worse, the Id is a conservative.

TAV has been a lot of work. My thanks to you who provided plenty of support. Just to let you know, my wife is not pleased with the time it takes.

Then the most unusual thing happened two weeks ago, Climategate broke right here. Ground zero!!

Today, on reflection of the past year, even understanding that Mann has recently faked the hockey sticks which passed unmolested through peer review, I’m absolutely shaken by the content of the emails. The meaning has taken a long time to set in. We finally have proof that the collusion to block peer review. We have proof that data was manipulated openly in emials. We have proof of intent to manipulate the IPCC process and PROOF that the FOIA’s were illegally blocked through collusion by government employees.

We knew these things already but now we have the proof!!

Who da Mann

Some fun emails from Singer, Monkton, Mann and others going back and forth on hockeysticks and such.  IMO Mann’s hockey sticks are the worst science I’ve read but I’m just talking about the 08, 09 versions.  Those previous versions have been roundly broken by MM and Wegman prior to the NAS panel, unfortunately the NAS report was written too softly and Mann didn’t get the message. The whole email is long so the number is 1170724434.txt.

Curt Covey Subject: IPCC and sea level
rise, hi-res paleodata, etc. To: Christopher Monckton , Fred Singer Cc: Jim Hansen ,
mann@psu.edu, Clifford Lee In-Reply-To: <20061229145211.611FC1CE304@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=”0-1893172854-1170723187=:47787″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: <805971.47787.qm@web60817.mail.yahoo.com>
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-sophos X-PSU-Spam-Flag: NO X-PSU-Spam-Hits: 0 Christopher and
Fred,
Now that the latest IPCC WG1 SPM is published, I can venture more opinions on the
above-referenced subjects.
It is indeed striking that IPCC’s estimate of maximum plausible 21st century sea-level rise
has decreased over time.  The latest estimate is 0.5 meters for the A2 emissions scenario
(not much higher from the 0.4 meter estimate for the A1B emissions scenario, which the Wall
Street Journal editorial page has made much of).  On the other hand, the IPCC seems to have
taken a pass on Hansen’s argument.  The IPCC says their estimates are “excluding future
rapid dynamical changes in ice flow . . . because a basis in published literature is
lacking.”
In this one respect (sea level rise) I agree with today’s Journal editorial that the
science is not yet settled.  Unfortunately, the editorial runs completely off the tracks
thereafter by (1) comparing 2006 vs. 2001 surface temperatures, among all the 150 or so
years on record, and (2) asserting a “significant cooling the oceans have undergone since
2003″ based apparently on one published data-set that contradicts all the others.  It is
not appropriate to cherry-pick data points this way.  It’s like trying to figure out
long-term trends in the stock market by comparing today’s value of the Dow with last
Tuesday’s value.
Re high-resolution paleodata, I never liked it that the 2001 IPCC report pictured Mann’s
without showing alternates.  Phil’s Jones’ data was also available at the time.  Focusing
so exclusively on Mann was unfair in particular to Mann himself, who thereby became the
sole target of criticism in the Wall Street Journal etc.
It now seems clear from looking at all the different analyses (e.g. as summarized in last
year’s NRC review by North et al.) that Mann is an outlier though not egregiously so.  Of
course, like any good scientist Mann argues that his methods get you closer to the truth
than anyone else.  But the bottom line for me is simply that all the different studies find
that the rate of warming over the last 50-100 years is unusually high compared with
previous centuries.
Summarizing all this, the latest IPCC does back off a bit from the previous one.  It says
on Page 8, “Some recent studies indicate greater variability [than Mann] in
[pre-industrial] Northern Hemisphere temperatures than suggested in the TAR . . .”  The
wording is perhaps insufficiently apologetic, but I find it hard to object strenuously to
it in light of the main point noted in the last paragraph.
If you want to discuss any of this further, let me know.  I attach my latest presentation
– and would appreciate seeing both Christopher’s report mentioned in the Journal editorial
and Fred’s comment on Rahmstorf’s article published in Science last week.
Best regards,
Curt

It is what it is- and the GOD of Physics will have it no other way!

Warning, global warming believer, read at your own risk.

I’m writing this post to make a point to all the new readers here why I’m not a denier yet am a skeptic. I’m an aeronautical engineer who works as an optical engineer but mostly business owner in my day job. Therefore the following equations are very familiar to me. I’ve received permission from Lucia at the Blackboard to repost this here . My opinion is that people who deny the possibaility of greenhouse climate change do not understand the basic proof – and it IS an absolute proof of the warming effect of greenhouse gasses.

My opinion is that people who deny have the basic understanding that the science is politicized, corrupted and exaggerated for a hidden agenda. Something revealed quite clearly in the ClimateGate emails and subsequent events. What they don’t understand is that the argument against global warming goes too far and is completely unnecessary.

I’ll try to keep all of this simple but it might get a bit tricky for non-scientific folks. My hope though is to convince some of those who are ‘deniers’ that the warming effect exists and that the proper ‘and far stronger’ argument lies elsewhere. First the basic physics have been around for hundreds of years. These physics actually have a consensus because unlike treerings, hockeysticks, and climate models these equations have been validated by experiment.

A Climate Scientist Replies to ClimateGate

As the undeniability of the problems in climate science exposed in these emails is beginning to be grasped by the public, scientists in the field have begun to speak out.  Today on a thread at Watts Up With That, a post from climate scientist who studied at Harvard was featured.  Sean is very clear, pulls no punches, and is worth the time of anyone who’s interested in climategate to read.

Posted by Sean December 2, 09 11:26 PM

I am a climate scientist, and it is clear that the evidence that “human activity is prominent [sic] agent in global warming” is NOT overwhelming. The repeated statement that it is does not make it so. Further, even if we accepted the hypothesis, cap-and-trade legislation does not do anything about it.

Here are the facts. We have known for years that the Mann hockey stick model was wrong, and we know why it was wrong (Mann used only selected data to normalize the principal component analysis, not all of it). He retracted the model. We have known for years that the Medieval Warm period occurred, where the temperatures were higher than they are now (Chaucer spoke of vineyards in northern England).

Continued below:

Pielke Saying the Truth

Some don’t like that I let my political veiws show.  Which do you prefer, showing or hiding.

Roger Pielke Jr. called out Mann And Schmidt on this today on their politics.  My opinion is that the scientists at RC are guilty of the advocacy agenda (and it is a foolish extremist agenda) of globalism, socialism and non-elected government involvement in every aspect of our lives. These people live in a world where money comes from the government.  They don’t spend even one minute of their lives worrying about being laid off or making payroll.  They have never been concerned with supply of product or producing a good.  They live sheltered lives where such political views can make sense.  Not every professor get’s corrupted or fails to understand the outcome of these amazingly reckless policies, but many do.

You all hear from me enough, here’s Roger’s take.

Your politics are showing

Roger Writes:

I think we can get past the lie — and it was a lie — that these activist scientists, in the words of Gavin Schmidt, “are not taking a political stand.” They are indeed taking a political stand and they are doing so in stealth fashion using the authority and institutions of science as cover to do so. As the leaked CRU emails show, this group of activist scientists are firmly entrenched in the major institutions of climate science, such as the IPCC.

One Hour Left

Lucia called my attention to this email so I thought I’d put it up.

I don’t have the ability to get a recording of this conference call but I would like it if someone did (11AM Eastern).  As we head into Copenhagen where our fearless leader will ignore anything said by his constituents  the Soros funded lackies are getting a conference call together for discussion of taking action and pushing forward with the extremist agenda of Copenhagen.

I am thoroughly surprised that Mann and Schmidt would do this.  Romm is already a paid Soros stooge and we do know already that Real Climate is hosted by a ‘Progress’ group but they claim no real association.  Today that auspice of science before politics ends. Today Mann and Schmidt are coming out in full support of the Copenhagen agenda for ‘mitigation’ of global economy and wealth redistribution through a global government with the power to tax and redistribute based on their vision of the environment.

PRESS CALL TOMORROW: Climate Science – Setting the Record Straight

*Michael Mann*, A Leading Climate Scientist and Professor of Meteorology at
Pennsylvania State University Whose Hacked Personal Emails Have Recently
Become the Source of Media Attention Will Be Joined By NASA Climate
Scientist *Dr. Gavin Schmidt*, Princeton’s *Dr. Michael Oppenheimer*, and
CAP Senior Fellow *Dr. Joseph Romm* to Discuss the Overwhelming Scientific
Understanding of the Danger Posed by Unmitigated Global Warming Pollution,
and That the Stolen Emails Reveal Nothing That Changes Our Extensive
Understanding of Climate Science, Tomorrow, *Friday December 4 at 11:00 AM
EST.*

Leaders from 190 nations are meeting in Copenhagen next week because they
understand the science behind climate change is real, and that the evidence
is growing stronger that each day we delay to address the problem increases
the danger to our planet and our economy. Against this backdrop, opponents
of action –who have been ignoring the unequivocal scientific evidence and
misrepresenting the facts for decades– are now exaggerating and distorting
a batch of stolen emails from prominent climate scientists in a further
effort to block action. Opponents of cleaner energy have, since the 1970s,
systematically attacked and politicized sound science in an attempt to widen
the partisan divide and mislead the public. The global consensus on climate
change science has been reached by through decades of work by thousands of
independent scientists from different institutions in nations around the
world. Now more than ever it is critical for Americans to understand that
the scientific evidence that climate change poses a very real threat to our
health, economy, and planet has never been clearer. Tomorrow Michael Mann, a
leading climate scientist and author of part of the IPCC third assessment
report, along with IPCC participant Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton,
and Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA, will discuss the mounting scientific evidence
since the IPCC’s 2007 assessment report, and why it is in fact more clear
now than ever before that we must take action to solve the global climate
crisis.

*Who:*

Professor Michael
Mann<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/michael-mann/>,
Director, Earth Systems Science Center, Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Gavin Schmidt<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/gavin-schmidt/>,
climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Professor Michael
Oppenheimer<http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/>,
Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy
(STEP) at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School

Dr. Joseph Romm <http://www.americanprogress.org/experts/RommJoseph.html>,
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, and Editor of
ClimateProgress.org

*When: *Friday December 4, 11:00am

*Call Info: *877-210-8943
*Conference ID: *45259408
***Please be sure to provide the Conference ID number.*

*What:* Press Conference Call to with three leading climate scientists to
discuss the state of climate science against the backdrop of the
Climategate/email affair. The panel will explain the context for some of the
emails and why they do not alter the overwhelming scientific understanding
of the danger posed by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions — an
understanding that has only grown stronger in recent years.

Please contact Suzi Emmerling at 202-481-8224 or
semmerl…@americanprogress.org if you plan to attend the call.

American Progress is part of a massive network of (non-political) 501C corporoations supporting wealth redistribution under the same auspices used to sell socialism to populations.  Help the poor.  We know (as do the wealthy who fund these groups) that helping the poor is what represses their ability to help themselves.  While they must declare non-partisanship to get tax free money, 501C’s are nearly always politically motivated and therefore illegal.  The progress groups are the worst offenders.

Copenhagen is extremism in a way people don’t understand. The proposed treaty is here — http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/un-fccc-copenhagen-2009.pdf

Kettle: Hey Pot – You Black?

You’ve got to love the unbiased press coverage of climategate. First they ignore it for weeks then they switch to name calling and marginalization.

“Those who deny”

So as I’ve repeatedly pointed out here, the friggin emails were discovered on a blog that makes no such denail. The scientists calling for the investigations are not deniers. Even Mann said Jones might have gone too far. Why do you think the media insists on lying about this?

Anyway, what do you think the UN will find whilst investigating itself….. Um yes we’ve discovered there is a pattern of manipulation of climate data prevalent across all of our hundred billion dollar globalization efforts. Please defund us…

United Nations to probe climate e-mail leak

Tom Fuller’s Questions

I don’t always agree with Tom Fuller (or anyone else ) but in my opinion he’s been as honest as any of us will ever meet on climate science.

Global warming–differences between questions asked and questions answered

Two weeks after Climategate broke and it certainly hasn’t helped the various sides communicate any better. I see with my own commenters here that anyone who is offended by the alleged actions of The Team of climate scientists who may variously have tried to evade FOIA requests, corrupt the peer review process, massage data presented to the public and covered up troublesome data in their reports is automatically a denialist and worse. It’s not much different in the wider media world, with people now yelling at the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin from both sides of the issue, and he’s not alone.

The Denial Parade

Again this link was received by email and am not sure if they want credit.

First it was ALL of Real Climate, then North, then Santer, comes Kevin Trenberth. All saying the same things (nothing to see, out of context) while not providing the correct context for the emails. For those of us too mentally impaired to understand ‘hide the decline’ it would be nice to have an explanation. They lie to us saying nothing happened while even FOIA law was obviously broken– ‘everything was honest’ despite the hiding of data. I’m tired of bashing on these guys but as their free of charge self appointed lawyer, the best thing for them to do would be to shut the heck up. (we’re tired!!) In the meantime, I’m working on sea ice posts, paper reviews and other fun stuff and don’t mind letting these left-wing professors bent on repressing industry, sink their own boat.

Kevin Trenberth: Standing up for the IPCC Process

Trenberth says, rightly, that he is proud of the openness and accountability shown by scientists such as him and Phil Jones from the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit. We could only cheer the day that the same transparency was shown by, say, the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute – two parties that are being inordinately enthusiastic about these stolen emails.

More specifically, in WG I, there were 11 chapters and the report was 996 pages plus supplementary material online. There were 140 lead authors, hundreds of contributors, and 2 or 3 Review editors for each chapter (26). There were also over 700 reviewers. For Chapter 3, the Coordinating Lead Authors were Kevin E. Trenberth and Philip D. Jones. There were 10 other Lead Authors, and 66 Contributing Authors. The published chapter ran to 101 pp plus online supplementary material, 47 figures (126 panels), 8 Tables, and 863 references, making it the longest chapter in the report. In the expert scientific review there were 2231 comments and another 1270 comments in governmental review, for a total of 3501 comments. Every comment and the writer were entered into a huge spread sheet along with the response and actions taken in terms of changing the text.

The role of the IPCC is to provide policy relevant but not policy prescriptive scientific advice to policy makers and the general public. IPCC scientists with all kinds of value systems, ethnic backgrounds, and from different countries, gather together to produce the best consensus science possible, and with appropriate statements about confidence and uncertainty. The strength of the IPCC report is not just the solid scientific credentials but also the open process by which it is created.

And a little context from the very first post on Climate Gate at tAV.

Open Letter from Ben Santer

I received a copy of this letter written by Ben Santer to the climate community by email.  tAV is an open blog so I’ll let him have his say.   From my perspective, I don’t trust Mr. Santer after his highly convenient clipping of data in his recent ‘prove models are accurate’ paper.  When the whole dataset is used the models are proven wrong.  The whole thing stinks and he is widely featured in the CRU emails.  I’ll just warn you that you might get a little pissed off, his writings below exonerate Phil Jones (hide the decline, hide temp data, code and illegally block FOIA) of any wrong doing.

—-

Dear colleagues and friends,

I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking incident
which recently took place at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic
Research Unit (CRU). This was a criminal act. Over 3,000 emails and
documents were stolen. The identity of the hacker or hackers is still
unknown.

The emails represented private correspondence between CRU scientists and
scientists at climate research centers around the world. Dozens of the
stolen emails are from over a decade of my own personal correspondence
with Professor Phil Jones, the Director of CRU.