While sitting here with my son, I took a moment to look around blogland and noticed Climate Audit has come out with what I consider a proper response to the rubbish science recently swept to the corner by the UK parliament. In fact, it has got to be the strongest worded post I’ve seen from CA. Take a look here. The post is titled “Tricking the Committee” but of course we all know that nobody was tricked.
Since everyone knows we’re being lied to by the politicians and the scientists at the center of the debate, what I want to know is where are the honest climate scientists? Why aren’t the honest scientists standing up for good science? Is it that ALL climate scientists support corruption for a common goal? Do they fear Jones and Mann soo much? Are they just more interested in the extremist political solutions for the globe than true science?
Where are the Judith Curry’s who would speak out?
It should be such an obvious thing to do, reject bad “hide the decline” science and push on toward good. Yet all the biggest names in climate science are silent! Same response to Mann’s annual hockey stick debacles.
We are not fooled by political reviews. Hell this review put the intended expenditure of “trillions” of pounds toward mitigation right in the summary.
We are waiting!!!
the Air Vent 
Speaking of the climategate corruption, check out how hard they’ve been trying to keep Ross McKitrick from debunking a completely false IPCC claim:
http://devoidofnulls.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/lock-out/
Re: timetochooseagain (Mar 31 21:41),
I don’t think that’s limited to climate science. Journals just aren’t interested in publishing claim and counter-claim ad infinitum. If I weren’t so lazy, I would look up the reference to the account of the travails of one scientist’s trying to get a comment published to reply to a completely wrong paper that essentially demolished his life’s work.
I think Dewitt is referring to this .
I think it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. For the most part, the people who are drawn to a “climate science” education and career are predisposed to accept the kind of shoddy work produced by the mainstream “climate scientists” (those whose emails are included in the Climagegate emails).
As someone with an engineering education (EE) and who spent the past 30 years engaged in that field, and who has spent on average 3-4 hours each day for the past 3-4 years studying the AGW issue, it is increasingly clear to me that “climate science” is more astrology than science.
Based on what is produced by IPCC, CRU, GISS, Penn State, NCAR, NOAA, NCDC, NSIDC, Realclimate (and other AGW-friendly blogs), I just can’t be convinced that the majority of “climate science” practitioners are really very smart, or at least adequately educated. I mean, honestly, Michael Mann (and others like him) produce studies that say there was no Medieval Warm Period — something that is well-established historical fact — and the bulk of “climate science” doesn’t blink? (And those people keep their jobs?) Really?
The story’s details are outrageous, Dewitt, BAMS for instance just completely ignored Ross. I’ve never heard of it being so hard to find a place to publish a paper-especially one which no reviewers could raise legitimate issues with.
What happened to Roger Pielke Senior when he was invited to comment is wacko, to. Not only did they arbitrarily say he was taking too long well before the deadline they had given him, and not give consideration for the fact that they did not help him deal with an odd problem accessing their website, but additionally they would not respond to his efforts to object to this.
Jeff Id could you please explain this briefly. I don’t know what to believe anymore. Theory is not fact.
What does this mean for climate change scientists?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm
The chicken and the egg are in bed together, the chicken is smoking. The egg rolls over and says, we know the answer to that question now.
This is the headline of the above article. I sure wish you had an edit button on this forum. Here’s one scientists speaking up, maybe a nut case I do not know.
Lovelock: ‘We can’t save the planet’
Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet.
I am sad to say that Limbaugh called this dead-on. We are being lied to and manipulated by the four corners of corruption and Liberalism – science, academia, politics and the media.
RB,
Thanks for the link to that fantastic paper.
Even in my angry funk over the recent Parliamentary report I laughed out loud several times reading the travails of the poor scientist author.
I actually spilled my coffee when I read the following steps in his frustrating sojourn.
His ability to maintain his sense of humor may have been the only reason he preserved his sanity.
#6 He has no more idea what will happen in the future than anyone else. We cannot forecast the climate in 50 years, and we cannot determine the causes. If he doesn’t know then he is fear mongering, although I’m sure he believes in what he says. The science does not support any of the disaster scenario’s. Not a single one, but they still get published.
There isn’t much I can do to keep people from fear mongering about changing climate, but what I can say is this. According to the scientists (not the data) CO2 will stay in the air for thousands of years. According to the science, we have no methods to stop producing CO2 from our vehicles and maintain our way of life. We cannot do it. According to the politicians, the solution is to give our money to poor countries to buy particular ‘green’ products from certain global corporations. None of this will do anything to stop producing the CO2 we’re told to dread. Therefore if the AGW fear mongerers are right, we simply cannot stop the climate from changing. We have no power for that. Therefore we should want to keep as much of our own wealth, that we earned ourselves, as possible to mitigate the problems caused.
Really the positions taken by the scientists only make sense when viewed from a leftist political viewpoint. Limitation of personal freedom is the answer they promote, which cannot create the technology required to solve the problem they have defined. Think about that, limitation of personal wealth cannot create technology and current technology cannot solve the problem. Not surprisingly, the positions by the politicians (i.e. cap and trade)only make sense when viewed from an increased power and money viewpoint. The politicians dole out CT favors to preferred companies i.e. payoffs and fake markets are created for their friends. Check the ties of the Chicago climate exchange to Obama and you’ll see why cap and trade is so important to him. — not carbon tax! The value of those markets can be controlled by speeches and policy comments by our leaders. What does that mean for their friends when they can directly control the value of the fake market.
————-
Which is why I’m serious about this thread btw, if we do not hear from the scientists, isn’t that confirmation that they are not interested in good science?
It is one year since you made this comment and the Obama Adm has wasted billions of our tax dollars on wind farms and solar panel company grants, even GM’s grren car, the Volt, has proved a fire hazard. It seems that since Obama, Washington is showing itself as corrupt as as we always believed it is, maybe if we ALL stopped sending in our tax money, they’d get the point.
Where are the scientists?
Click to access how_govt_corrupts_sci.pdf
Post 11 – Many of “us” knew that already of the main consensus players, ie,
” isn’t that confirmation that they are not interested in good science? “
What I think is beginning to dawn on so many now, is how many “others” on both “main” sides
of the supposed “climate” debates are really on the same side.
Some “skeptics” are more obviously double agents than others, but in the end they all are on the same “side”.
They “all” have no interest in good science,
just the continuing discussion of psueudo science.
For some it is greed, for some it is political objectives, for some it is for personnal “reputation”.
For most of the above it is also because they are paid to do “it”.
Though for some (seemingly most actually – on both “sides” ie, Hansen, and Ball) sadly it is literally
“I ain’t going to admit I was wrong”.
They all seem to forget the ultimate judge in this is TIME.
TIME will not be kind to them, as it was not to the flat earthers,
which they all are in respect of CO2, the unproven hypothesis of AGW and, the greenhouse effect so called “theory”.
#13 Derek: “They all seem to forget the ultimate judge in this is TIME. TIME will not be kind to them…”
You presuppose that there is no global warming. There seems to be strong empirical evidence that the global mean temperature has increased at the rate of 2 degrees celsius per century during the last 30 years. e.g.
If there is such warming then your assertion that time will not be kind to them is, in the short term at least, unsupported by fact. Their correlation of global warming to anthropogenic Co2 emissions (ignoring the premise that correlation is not causation) will not be necessary because their renewed crowing of the “science is settled” catch-cry will drown out the question of causation.
I believe Jeff hits the nail on the head in #11: “Therefore we should want to keep as much of our own wealth, that we earned ourselves, as possible to mitigate the problems caused.” This is the logical thing to do in times of uncertainty.
Re: RB (Mar 31 22:06),
Yes. That was it. Thanks.
My guess is virtually every practitioner of this art would like the fuss to be over.
Stating a more accurate version of the meaning of this term of art, “trick,” isn’t going to make the fuss die out.
So I don’t expect anyone to speak up.
Call me a cynic, but I don’t believe this is true. Maybe some, but many, if not most, are simply interested as painting “skeptics” as “deniers” so nobody will listen to them. It has nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with pushing whatever agenda happens to be on the plate. Why else would the echo chambers dishonestly edit legitimate points (or simply delete them outright) to make them easy to refute? Why else would so many pages here and elsewhere be devoted to the obvious problems that climate science is loathe to address? Why else would it be accepted practice to deny legitimate requests for data?
Every time an argument from somebody outside the “consensus” begins with “I don’t deny global warming,” I cringe. Such a statement should not be necessary, and actually works against whatever point is being made in the first place. Skeptics that start off with such a proclamation immediately put themselves in a hole, which makes proving their point that much more difficult – regardless of the validity of the point in the first place.
Mark
Mark, going by your blockquote, it looks like you intended to post on this thread: https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/the-solution-is-the-problem/
Maybe Jeff can can move it over for you.
Thank you for answering, Jeff.
#17 The paint the skeptics and deniers the same way the are trying to painter the Tea Party group. Sal Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” seems to be the way they do business these days. If they can marginalize and mock a group the group loses its voice. It needs to be turned around on them.
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/rules.html
It’s the case of when good men nothing evil wins. So, all the so called good scientists who know that AGW is a hoax but keep quiet are no better than those who peddle the lies to support AGW, in particular the notion that we already know most of what there is to know about how climate change works, and that we can predict climate change 50-100 years in advance to within a degree or two, and in some cases a lot less. Hahahahaha!
Jeff @ #17, well said. I’m in total agreement. However, I would go as far as to say they will win eventually, if not with AGW then with something else. They have the three things on their side that the public never really had in abundance and never will: money, power and a agendas. Sad but true. George Orwell and others were great futurists in that respect who explained how major events may unfold in different ways. The Bible is another. It’s a shame the public and the so called professional media (which are anything but professional) won’t wake up to all this. But then that’s the way it is, and there’s nothing the public by and large can do to change it, simply because they don’t want to. So, all we who can see through the shroud of illusion can do is “bend with the wind” and look after ourselves as best we can. The Wizard of Oz can do all his tricks to please the crowd, but that won’t alter the fact we know better, not that it will alter the end game. At least we can see through the tricks and understand how they are unfold when they do. It’s a bit like watching a movie after reading the book. You can’t change the story line but at lest you can understand it better.
#22 I’m grumpy but I’m not Mark.
14-“There seems to be strong empirical evidence that the global mean temperature has increased at the rate of 2 degrees celsius per century during the last 30 years.”
You are way off on the rate. UAH has it at 1.3 degrees per century, HadCRUT at 1.5, and remember that the lower atmosphere rate is supposed to be greater than the surface rate. In point of fact the rate is closer to one degree per century than two.
Thanks Dewitt Payne and RB for the sad story about that physicist trying to be heard.
My experience is that there are many scientists in the community who know that C-AGW is a load of rubbish. Sure, increasing CO2, as we are undoubtedly doing, will increase that small portion of atmospheric warming attributable to CO2 but even the IPCC admitts that doubling CO2 to 0.08% will produce only just over 1ºC warming. A great many engineers and scientists do not feel adequately qualified to stand up in public but they know the basic science.
Common sense says that if the oceans warm slightly, the CO2 escapes and the atmosphere will contain slightly more water vapour. That will ultimately lead to more precipitation globally. Increased cloud leads to higher albedo and reduces surface warming,- hence the long term stability of climate. It’s the job of climate scientists to put numbers to this process but they are not doing it.
What would be the legal ramifications if 100 well qualified scientists proved that there is a negative feed-back loop with water vapour as opposed to the positive one supposed by the IPCC? I reckon it would be a nightmare in the courts.
Layman Lurker said
April 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm
I did. I don’t know how this happened. I was in that thread, copied, pasted, hit submit and oila! Where’d my post go?
Peter of Sydney said
April 1, 2010 at 8:14 pm
On this, surprisingly, I’m actually an optimist. I do believe that things must bottom out, but in the end, rationality actually seems to always win, even if it is not in my lifetime, which genetics seems to be indicating 30 years more or so. It just takes a while.
What George Orwell was incapable of seeing (he was a socialist after all) was that the things that lead to his nightmarish scenario inevitably lead to revolt and upheaval long before they get to the point we are all enslaved. Even his “democratic socialism” – which is a moniker for “we vote for the players in our tyranny” – will lead to such an outcome. We are smart, and getting smarter, in spite of the failure of Eugenics (hehe) to take hold a century ago. It is getting harder to fool the masses, oddly, and I think you can see that the voices that are trying to do so are getting more and more shrill and more and more desperate in their attempts to silence those opposed to the plan.
Mark
^Jeff: hehe, grumpy, yeah, that’s it! 🙂
d55may said
April 1, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Exactly.
I ignore them. Call me a denier, I’m tired of playing their game and I have tilted at this windmill far too many times already. Whatever anymore, it does not matter. Let them avoid the issues; as I note, in the end, I think people will wise up and the marginalizers will suddenly find themselves… marginalized. Maybe this is how we turn it around on them? There’s no worse punishment than to suffocate an ego. What will Mann do when nobody listens?
I think my misplaced comment still works here. 🙂
Mark
From my experience as an engineer working with scientists for decades, I find that scientists have a tendency to act together almost like a sort of trade group. In industry I notice they argue and compete with one another; but stand firm as a group to exclude engineers and line managers preferring to gain and maintain an audience with top management. Although my only real experience with academia was as a student, it appears that the same observation of climate scientists (who as far as I can see are all employed by academia or government) can be made here and it helps explain why there is so little dissent being voiced by the majority of climate scientists. It also helps explain why they hate scrutiny from the likes of Jeff Id. How dare you invade their turf, their trade group that you are not a member of.
The reason they act like this, in my opinion, is that is how they get a hearing, have influence, and make money and make a living. Once committed to a line of thinking it is practically impossible for a working scientist to back off. While we engineers make our living by performing services or inventing something; a scientist if proven in egregious error or shamed is ruined. Refer to Phil Jones.
So – I am not surprised by their closing of ranks. I am not surprised (or offended) by the latest issue of Scientific American or other silly proclamations coming out of MSM.
However, their behavior is inexcusable as they are preaching untruth. Said untruth is produced by sloppy, slovenly, pseudoscience. History will not judge these individuals kindly. It is morally and ethically necessary to keep up the scrutiny and expose AGW fraud. Just don’t be too surprised if a lot of the heavy lifting is done by engineers and the few scientists of integrity.
I call myself a climate realist.
Trick question: If two people in a room are arguing over temperature and there’s a thermometer on the wall who do you believe. The thermometer of course.
That’s why I know there is no measurable AGW effect and that the “scientists” have lowered old temps and raised recent temps. I believe the thermometer and don’t have to be skeptical or deny anything.
I am a climate realist. I looked at the thermometer.
GregO said
April 2, 2010 at 11:55 am
I’m sure you have noticed as well that engineers tend toward the opposite: we rarely agree and bicker all the time, and when asked to voice our opinions publicly, they are all different. Amazing how 100 engineers can have 200 different ideas regarding how to do something others would consider simple.
Oh, I must admit, as an R&D-type engineer, I do consider myself a scientist somewhat.
Mark
Jeff Id:
Indeed, indeed, indeed, Jeff! Where were all the 31,000 scientists speaking out against climate science alarmism in the “Oregan Petition”? Or perhaps it’s the 700, or is it 650, or is it 604 (I forgot) scientists in James Inhofe’s list speaking out against climate science alarmism? Or the 500 scientists in the “Heartland 500 list”, which was retroactively blessed into a petition, speaking out against climate science alarmism?
Have all the 31,000/700/500 scientists been secretly ‘disappeared’ by the Phantom Soviet Empire? This is such a terrible crime! A terrible, terrible, terrible crime indeed!
I demand answers from the University of East Anglia! What did you do to all the brave scientists?!?!?!?
And I demand answers to all the security agencies in the world — CIA, NSA, MI5, Mossad, FSB, and what have you! Why have you failed to uncover such a massive campaign of genocide against honest scientists?!?!?!? Why?!?!?!?
#32
I was thinking more of the group that publishes in climatology. Not everyone is tied in with the paleo crowd. Recently at CA one scientist did pipe up, but she pretended that ‘hide the decline’ somehow was in our imaginations. Somehow that it was reasonable to chop off data you don’t like.
To me, when they don’t publicly scorn the whole message, when they don’t simply slam the UK exoneration as bogus, they are as much the problem as Jones and Mann.
#33,
Jeff,
1. To me, a major problem is that there is a huge confusion between academic and scientific, because a lot of the work being done happens to be in universities/academia. All of this peer review, consensus, rebut, refute, debunking and debating crap has little to do with scientific investigation. It is academic convention not science.
Imagine the difference if academia had nothing to do with it?
2. Everything I see in climate studies reinforces my impression that work is done to confirm a predetermined agenda.i.e. what is ‘right’ is what confirms our viewpoint. Anything else is obviously wrong.
So obviously, that it is not even necessary to investigate it. Even if we can’t find out why, it is still wrong, or else it would confirm our viewpoint.
Coming from there, it is impossible to conceive of an alternate viewpoint. There is no such thing.
3.Simple experiment – any engineer, and I would hope any scientist,should be able to ‘switch sides’ on such disagreements.e.g.
If I like mechanical encoders, and you like optical encoders, we should both be extremely familiar with the good and bad points of both. If requested, I could defend your reasons for your choice, and vice versa. Otherwise how can we pick the most appropriate for our purposes?
Not so in climate studies, there is only one true way.
4.Much of the work done seems to be done only to refute observations that threaten the status quo. It is reactive in the extreme, is often sloppy and hastily cobbled together, and is done only until it is deemed enough to ‘rebut’ or ‘debunk’ the particular heresy of the moment. This is particularly evident when the refutation of the next heresy exposes the ‘debunked’ shortcomings of a previous one.
5. Hope is at hand, it’s budget time – may the trend continue and accelerate
http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100401/climate_funding_100403/20100403/?hub=WinnipegHome
Jeff Id:
If a data series doesn’t correlate well with temperature, then obviously the correct thing to do is not to use it as a proxy for temperature.
That is, the correct thing to do is to discard it from the bag of temperature proxies.
Which part of the above do you not understand?
#35, I’m not sure what you’re attempting to argue.
If you are saying we can take a collection of proxy’s and sort them for the ones which correlate to temperature throwing away the rest, that is wrong, see the hockey stick posts above. This is my favorite discussion so I would very much enjoy it if this was your point.
If you are saying that in the case of the single Briffa series which had the decline can be truncated calling the rest of the series temperature – that’s wrong too.
If you are saying that the best way to handle the Briffa series was to simply eliminate this single instance of problematic data, that’s a problem too. First, you’ve made a set of assumptions that allow you to select special thermometer trees. Then you go find trees which have correlation to temp and a bunch of others which don’t match temp. It’s apparent that you call into question the validity of the basic assumptions. Jones and Mann absolutely agreed with this or hide the decline would never have been necessary.
Perhaps you could clarify.
You’re saying that there are some data series which are obviously anointed from on high as ‘temperature proxies’, and we should use all of them. That is bull.
There are data series. Some data series correlate with temperature and are produced by processes that causse correlate with temperature; others aren’t. It’s that simple.
That’s like saying that because a crime scene may be deliberately manipulated, which’ll undermine the basic assumptions of criminal forensics, therefore the whole enterprise of criminal forensics is a hoax, and we should therefore revert to using voodoo methods to solve crimes.
Seriously, are you just looking for every flimsy excuse you can find to accuse climate scientists of being hoaxers? The UK Parliament found nothing to answer to, and indeed there is nothing to answer to. There’s no Phantom Soviet Empire out there. The Soviet Empire is gone — gone! Get a grip.
#37, Again, I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Are you saying it might be somehow reasonable scientific method to chop off the parts of the data you don’t like or are you arguing that Mann’s method of elimination of series is acceptable or what?
Your accusation that I’m looking for a flimsy excuse sounds pretty flimsy itself.
#38,
Jeff, Seems to be a random elliptic conversation about proxies, and the choice of proxies, and incorrect quotations that you have or haven’t made, and that it is all your fault.
Not sure what it has to do with scientific ethics, which what I thought you were discussing, but hey, YMMV.
#39, The proxies and selection methods are central to the ethics debate. Hide the decline was about the elimination of a less preferred portion of the proxy data which didn’t correlate with temperature. This kind of methodology is unscientific of course and in this case was unethical.
If you have some incorrect quotations let me know, I will correct them.
Stepanovich, my advice to you is to do a bit of reading on statistical sampling methods, population statistics, and selection bias before you start to your lecture.
When you say that certain proxies are the product of processes which correlate with temperature, this is why dendros go the alpine or latitudinal treelines to take their samples – presumably because growth is the dominant factor in limiting growth. But even in these areas, there are many other facors which influence growth and cause noise in the population. Some of the noise is randomly correlated with temperature so when screening samples based on correlation it causes us to accept bad proxies (noise causes the temp correlation). Some of the noise is randomly uncorrelated with temperature so when screening it causes rejection of legitimate proxy trees whose are overwhelmed by the negative noise.
The net result is that correlation screening reduces the proportion of legitimate temp proxies in the sample population.
#41
This should obviously say that “temperature” is the dominant factor in limiting growth.