This is big news, simply because it’s insane. More emails were released regarding the fight back plan by climate science. If you guessed they would open the data and methods for review and discuss reasonably the solutions they present — you were wrong.
Climate scientists plot to hit back at skeptics
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
I’m curious how they will gut the credibility of people who question the science conclusions, while simultaneously hiding, modifying, and suppressing inconvenient data and exaggerating results. This should be a really special trick. My guess is that planning a fifty thousand dollar ad in a left wing paper won’t have that big an effect. It would make a fun blog post though, which we can then use to mock it — for free.
Only in climate science can this be considered true genius.
H/T Cris M and WUWT and of course the Climate Science community which is continually willing to provide insane material to blog on.
the Air Vent 
I had to check a couple times to make sure it was not April 1st.
Gut the credibility of skeptics? We’re talking about Paul Ehrlich here, a biologist who ranks in the t-ball league when he tries to stutter about demography. Think about it. Paul Erlich and his Club of Rome co-conspirators managed to convince people who could afford to have children and educate them not to have them, while the illiterate and the ignorant continued to have them. If Paul Ehrlich would care to discuss this, please contact me. Demography is one of the very few things I know something about.
this will blow up in there face.
Wow, just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any weirder than they already were,
someone else steps onto the pitcher’s mound and
WHAMMO,
uncorks an incredible triple-screwball!
Yowza!
Good thing you went away to that tradeshow, for ‘perspective’…
Hope you brought back a few satchels of cash,
the local climate-killer-comrades-cadre are looking like hungry wolves…
BTW, it seems your left hand is a bit faster than your right, as far as your race-condition typo’s …
Nice alternation from the lament of the unsung OCO sink…
RR
If their tactic indeed is to “aggressively partisan approach to gut the credibility of skeptics”, then Lucy is correct – it will certainly blow up in their face. Most of the scientific community has high standards of integrity and I seriously doubt serious scientists are goint to sit idly by and let charlatans try to destroy their respected colleagues.
But I say let them try! One shooting oneself in the foot never fails to deliver some good laughs.
Early morning here – I meant Luke Skywarmer, and not Lucy. Coffee is cooking and will soon work its wonders.
So the outlandishly partisan aggression on ‘RealClimate” is somehow insufficient to persuade us then? Slow learners, these alleged scientists.
They still don’t get it.
If they really had a valid position, all they would need to do is show their darned work! And they would have done so – immediately – if they hadn’t fudged it!
This will not further their cause.
If they really had a valid position, all they would need to do is show their darned work! And they would have done so – immediately – if they hadn’t fudged it!
I can’t believe that they don’t understand this. It is not the general public that they have to convince, it is the scientifically aware skeptics. In my mind, spin automatically implies a cover-up. Either they have been too long in the mine without fresh air, or they do not understand science, and how the data can trick you. Millikan got it wrong for one.
The article quotes the reasonable words of Judith Curry:
Not all climate scientists agree with forcing a political fight.
“Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.,” said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Surprising, since these strategies haven’t worked well for them at all so far.”
She said scientists should downplay their catastrophic predictions, which she said are premature, and instead shore up and defend their research. She said scientists and institutions that have been pushing for policy changes “need to push the disconnect button for now,” because it will be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored.
“Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research,” she said.
Being aggressive is NOT the way to go for the ‘warmers’.
This latest article in the Times attempts to ‘wipe out’ the skeptic backlash but seems only to serve
as a method of winding Times readers up !
Check out the ‘comments’ at the end of the article to see just how well this hard hitting article
informed and connected with it’s readership.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7050341.ece
Science really does need to START AGAIN without relying on ‘old papers’ or political patronage.
We have the technology and the time, let’s go away and do this the old fashioned scientific way –
*PROPERLY*.
At least they didn’t say “Deniers”.
[Bold mine]
“We are self-proclaimed authorities and these are revealed truths!” Did he really write that?
Their “outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” backfired in November when it became clear that they were doing that all along, but it will work now. Call me naive, but I have my doubts. Credibility in climate science sinks even further due to the actions of the out of control activists who seem to be driving the bus.
The first rule in any fight: “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster.”
It seems these guys are guilty of believing their own hype. The ‘oil funded denier’ meme is a useful propaganda tool, but actually believing it’s true is a silly distraction, and bound to make you less effective. And what about the meta-critique: why should scientists be ‘fighting’ anyone? As if they are political activists or something…
More sanity from Dr Curry:
Why am I hearing the opening stanza from the Twilight Zone when I read that piece in the Washington Times?
$50K for a NY Times ad will keep a few employees on the payroll for another week, but think of how many Haitian orphans it would feed. They would get more PR mileage out of a charitable donation than this folly.
When I read things like this, I too think that they just don’t get it. That they honestly believe they are absolutely right and righteous and it’s just a public-relations problem. But then I shake my head like a dog shedding water and decide yet again that no one can be that dense. No one can be so deaf, dumb, and blind that they do not notice the temple falling in ruins around them. Certainly not.
But if it is not stupidity, then the only other thing I can think of is insularity. They are so isolated from the real world that the only feedback they get are the “Amens!” from the choir surrounding them.
Scientists just need to read the recent pole here to know what they’re up against. Most didn’t deny anything about CO2 warming, they simply question the magnitude, effects and proposed solutions. Attacking a question with vitriol and and labeling of the questioner simply cannot resolve or help anything.
# 11
100 (cherry-picked) peer-reviewed papers.
The Met Office will not go down quietly.
Their boss has his “good forecast quality” and “performance” bonus to defend.
These, of course are the shower (pun intenede) who brought us Brits our “barbeque Summer” and the high probability of a milder than average Winter.
Erlich is not a climate scientist. He’s a soothsayer and a eugenics promoter in the guise of a biologist. A morally repugnant man who prefers to involuntarily sterilize the great unwashed than deal with them. He and his co-hort John Holdren (Science Czar) are perfect examples of the mentality of President Obama’s administration.
I am encouraged when Judith Curry gives the advice excerpted below. I have somewhat mixed feelings about her comment since she has herself been outspoken on climate policy.
Also, when she says “..be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored”, I wonder whether her advice is given in a strategic vain to temporarily back-off in order to re-obtain the leverage that she might feel was lost in climate scientists’ influence on policy.
Regardless, it is encouraging to see that some have come to realize that when scientists become partisans and advocates their scientific credibility will and should suffer.
I suspect that the “true believers” and the more extreme advocates do not see this as an issue, and, in fact, feel compelled to save the world with their advocacy. That might explain these recent talks of even more advocacy.
Jeff,
It’s a really good thing that climategate has had the effect it has had thus far. I admit some surprise that things have turned out this way. I would have predicted a different, and less desirable outcome from the release of the emails. Perhaps I’m too pessimistic?
What I’d like to see now is a detailed discussion of specific changes we should make to prevent future screw ups in our publicly funded science (all of it, not just climate science).
Here is my contribution for critique:
1) Grant recipients will be held accountable for releasing all data and code used in the analysis.
2) Before receiving another grant for further research, individual scientists must have their previously completed analysis replicated by someone else whom is not professionally connected to them.
3) Before receiving another grant for further research, individual scientists must replicate a completed study previously published by someone else whom is not professionally connected to them.
I would guess that the above grant requirements would force scientists to replicate studies outside their individual fields. But I think such cross training would be a good thing. It might also cut down on the excessive advocacy.
Up till now, all I’ve seen is some general discussions about how scientists can regain trust. But I’m not interested in trusting someones science. Instead I’d like to see changes that make it possible for me to judge the science without having to trust anyone to tell me what it means. Can we do a post on this?
This is a win-win for the NYT. They get $50K and a new comic page at the same time.
Just goes to prove that no amount of education can teach common sense.
An educated idiot is still an idiot.
From the article…
“Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.”
What I will be looking for as this gets going is a list of all the climate “scientists” who decide to align themselves with this bunch. I can think of a few names (Dr. Al Gore…).
It’s also clear from the article that the NAS does not want to get near this thing with a ten foot pole!
Desperate? yes. An indication they have learned nothing? yes.
It is a desperate attempt that shows the fight is not over, but apparently the debate is hitting too close to home. it is a wake up call for all those celebrating the Board of Inquiry in the UK on the withholding of data by the East Anglia group.
But it is also naive and stupid. As one remarked – $50,000 for the NY Times???
Indeed, why waste such money on what is becoming a dying outlet? They will reach the faithful, but very few others. They either must have more money than they know what to do with, or are just plain stupid.
I really do not know which it is.
Curry hit the nail on the head here –
“Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research,” she said.
It takes 1 gallon of diesel fuel to move 1 tonne of coal 150 miles. If one looks at where to major coal reserves left in the world are located, and looks at where the major coal consumers in the world are located, coal becomes a ‘less then economic’ energy option for most of the world very quickly.
We are not building 2 nuclear power plants in Georgia because we care about ‘climate change’. It’s 2,000 miles from Gillette, Wyoming to Athens, Georgia. That’s 13 gallons of diesel fuel to move a ton of 8500 BTU Coal. At $3/gallon for diesel fuel, that adds about 2.5 cents to the cost of a kilowatt of electricity. 1 ton of Wyoming coal = $10. 1 ton of Wyoming coal delivered to Georgia = $59.
James Hansen gave his ‘no air-con’ presentation in 1988.
IPCC FAR came out in 1990.
If you had been getting away with something for 20 years (or longer), which is half of your professional working life (or longer), why would you think of changing?
Especially when you have been on a good wicket with trips around the world and obeisant politicians, media and academia.
Does anyone know if these e-mails are in the public domain yet. I couldn’t see any link to them in the article.
Maybe this beating of the war drums will awaken Joe Romm from his laid-back, nuanced musings, and the next time he writes a blog piece about Roger Pielke, Jr. he won’t stop his rant at a mere 4,000 words, but really lets him have it.
I think the article is a “trick” and we know how to define “trick” now, thanks to many elegant explanations.
Was this the same Dr Schneider?
[We] have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Dr. Stephen Schneider. Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in “Trashing the Planet” (1990).
A bit O/T but let’s celebrate Anthropogenesis
http://cei.org/news-release/2009/03/19/cei-announces-%E2%80%9Chuman-achievement-hour%E2%80%9D-coincide-%E2%80%9Cearth-hour%E2%80%9D
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/earth_hour_running_slow/
Chris S @ 4:30
Myron Ebell at globalwarming.org has many of the emails and a link to the rest.
=====================================
Jeff,
I keep telling you, it’s the incompetence. These guys are stupid. Not because I disagree with them. I say they are stupid because they have a long, long track record of saying and doing lots of really stupid things. At some point, the weight of the evidence points to the most logical conclusion. And stupid is the only conclusion that logically fits all the evidence.
Many thanks Kim;)
“we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.”
Paranoia, the destroyer
And it goes like this
Seriously, this is textbook definition. How else to rationalize a statement like that?
This is really, really funny. It shows very clearly that the issue is not SCIENCE, it is politics and power. LOL. There is no real science behind AGW. Only politics and innuendo. That’s why the IPPC was needed. I’m still waiting for just ONE frigging scientific paper that clearly demonstrates that AGW is true or even plausible. If you have one, please post for discussion
Slightly OT but I wonder if people could comment on this. I am not sure exactly where to post this. I put it on tips at WUWT but it has not been cleared for awhile.
I read somewhere recently (unfortunately cannot remember where) that the reason that the temperature figures are changed or updated, is because only thermometers that have been in existence for 20 years are taken into account initially, but then as they reach 20 years, they are added into the measurements as are their measurements which go back 20 years.
Firstly, is this correct?
Secondly, how many of these thermometers in waiting “in the wings” are there, and where are they situated. Does anyone know? Is there a list somewhere?
In view of the long term planning to hoodwink the public (in my view of course), I would not put it past some people to have placed thermometers in locations 20 years ago, which will favour the increase when brought online now or in the future.
This is also related to the demise of many thermometers in rural locations as already documented.
I look forward to some comment on this.
#37
On the 20 year thing I know GISS uses that benchmark not just for the actual station but if the station is urban they need at a minimum 3 rural stations of 20 year lengths to do one of their adjustments. If they don’t have that they drop the station until they do, one such station that is “waiting in the Wings” is Auckland NZ, which I got confirmed by GISS when I found that station on the GISS station used list but they had no final output data for it. Here is the text of the email:
So there is right there a possible 284 stations that might show up in the next few years.
It is a fact we are still coming our of the previous major ice age so it’s normal to see a slight increase in the very long term temperature trend. What evidence is there that AGW is causing any of this very long term temperature rise, which started many thousands of years ago? Rather than the climate scientists wasting more of their resources to hit back at climate skeptics, why don’t they at least try to show how much AGW is contributing to this gradual rise, if any? So far they have proved nothing. What a waste of money, How many millions of lives could we have saved instead if the money they wasted was used on other projects? People should go behind bars for this. The AGW hoax is a crime against humanity.
XYZLATIN
The places where temperature is being recorded now, may differ markedly from where they were being measured 20 or 100 years ago. Stations move, disappear, return, have cities growing up around them. The original purpose of a thermometer was to record the microclimate around, it so the modern record is comparting apples with oranges as it goes far beyond this brief.
There has been an interesting discussion on this here
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/03/02/why-global-mean-surface-temperature-should-be-relegated/
tonyb
Boballab
In reality there are lots of active rural stations within 500 km of Auckland, probably dozens of them. Its just that NOAA and GISS are too lazy to find them. The data from these stations is sitting in the New Zealand national climate database and is available for free via the NIWA (National Institute of Water and Air Research)website. So the statement from GISS is merely a smoke screen.
But why would you want to use temperature data from Auckland? Sure there is an unbroken record going back to the 1850’s but remember this is a large modern city with a current population of more than 1 million. The temp data from Auckland (mostly Albert Park and Mangere)is hugely impacted by urban heat island effects. There are better temp records from other parts of the North Island of NZ and some of them are reasonably long.
Re: Peter of Sydney (Mar 6 04:01),
If you look at the last three interglacial periods in the Vostok ice cores, we’re well past the expected peak and temperature should be declining not increasing. The current Holocene interglacial has lasted about 12,000 years. That’s somewhat longer than average. The Antarctic Cold Reversal in the southern hemisphere and the Younger Dryas episode in the northern hemisphere may have flattened the peak somewhat. Long term temperature has been declining since the Holocene Optimum about 7,000 years B.P.
Can someone explain how temp measurements at a land station are picked for use in research? I assume the thermometer, regardless of type, keeps a continuous record, just like one hung outside the kitchen door. That would mean, in a 24 hour period, there are many, many, many choices for that day. Is it “Let’s take the reading at 2PM,” or “Let’s average all readings for the day,” or what?
Jon Rappoport @ Post# 44:
It is rather apparent to me that climate scientists use temperature data sets and are not very concerned about how an individual thermometer contributed to that data set. They use data sets because other scientists use those data sets and prestige of a data set is determined by this usage.
It is my view that scientists are not particularly interested in the uncertainties of historically reported/adjusted temperature data and particularly if that data were in agreement with a past theory/conjecture that they might have reported.
It has been revealed recently that the CRU data set cannot be completely traced backed in historical times to raw data. I would assume that the use of that data set would be avoided by climate scientists in favor of those data sets that can be traced back to raw data.
Another interesting phenomena I see is where there are alternative temperature data sets available to be used by a scientist for a particular study and on an independent sensitivity study one finds that other data sets yield significantly different results/conclusions. These sensitivity tests are invariable neglected by the reporting scientists.
DeWitt Payne @ Post#43:
Your comment brings to light for me the question of what would it take for us to avoid the next ice age and related questions of how far ahead should we be looking at climate. Why do we appear to limit that to approximately 100 years? And would not a future ice age be considerable more devastating to the global population than a few degrees rise in temperature and, in particular, when we consider the ability of man to adapt to temperature increases versus decreases?
Jim Hansen claims we have effectively avoided the next ice age with the CO2 we have placed in the atmosphere and if we wanted or it was necessary we could easily place sufficient GHGs into the atmoshere to avoid an ice age. He uses this agrument more to show that nothing good can come out of a warming climate, like avoiding an ice age, by claiming that we have already done that or could do it artifically.
Kenneth, #45:
Wow. They were not concerned with how an individual thermometer contributed to that data set. But somehow, at the beginning, there was a thermometer and somebody noted what it was recording, yes? And then what happened?
I’m reminded of old “Get Smart” episodes, where Agent Maxwell Smart told an outrageous lie like “Global temperatures are expected to increase by 5C over the course of the 20th century, would you believe it?”
The villain invariably responded “I find that hard to belive”.
Max Smart then came back with a not quite so outrageous lie like “Would you believe 3 C?”
If the story is not a hoax, those “climate scientists” come out as sillier than Maxwell Smart.
When caught in their outrageous lie, they’ll come back with an even more outrageous lie like
” Would you believe 10C?”
#41 Oh I know there is alot more stations in NZ as I have access to the Clifio site, but also because I found the real dataset that NCDC uses. See GHCN is not the official Climatological dataset, its one called DATSAV2 which has over 10,000 active stations and is compiled by the US Air Force.
Click to access td9950.pdf
#44
This expands on Kenneths point (which imho is the truth of it). Something that came out recently on WUWT was copies of the Swedish agency that maintains the Swedish data and in it was a link to their data. In it you find how they get there data since 1960. They have 5 different readings: at 0600, 1200 and 1800 UTC as well as Max/Min readings. The Swedes all five of those readings to get the mean temp reading they report.
Boballab—thanks for the info on the Swedes and US measuring methods. Does “mean” mean simply adding up, say, 5 readings for a day and then dividing by 5 to get the average?
#50
The Swedes state that they use a specific formula called Ekholm-Modens. Now I haven’t seen what the formula is and I only briefly looked at the first record and tested only one “mean”. What I found on that one was that it came to .05C below their listed mean by just adding the 5 together and dividing by 5.
Thanks for the correction DeWitt Payne (March 6, 2010 at 11:40 am)
I checked and the “consensus” is that we should now be heading for the next ice age. So, does this mean AGW if it were to be true is actually going to be good for us?
“top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach””
LOL. Are they planning to clone a million copies of Joe Romm? Will they distribute Tee shirts that say, “It’s melting faster than we thought”, written over a swimming polar bear on one side; and “Unprecedented” written over the hockey stick chart on the other.
I find it hard to come up with even more absurd scenarios, because every time I think of one, I remember that they’ve already used it.
#51:
Thanks again. A formula that uses a mean that isn’t an average and offers no up-front clear explanation for the variation it employs. Not a confidence builder. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure.
Kenneth Fritsch March 6, 2010 at 12:52 pm: Jim Hansen claims we have effectively avoided the next ice age with the CO2 we have placed in the atmosphere and if we wanted or it was necessary we could easily place sufficient GHGs into the atmoshere to avoid an ice age. He uses this agrument more to show that nothing good can come out of a warming climate, like avoiding an ice age, by claiming that we have already done that or could do it artifically.
Hansen is a loon. He actually believes we can control the climate. He is wrong. The latter part of his argument only makes sense if he hates mankind, which he probably does, as I think he, like many of his type, is a misanthrope. I wonder if all his grandchildren know that.