The Exxon funded swift boating of James Hansen

James Hansen replies to the deceitful IBD editorial:

The latest swift-boating (unless there is a new one among seven
unanswered calls on my cell) is the whacko claim that I received
$720,000.00 from George Soros. Here is the real deal, with the order
of things as well as I can remember without wasting even more time
digging into papers and records.

Sometime after giving a potentially provocative interview to Sixty
Minutes, but before it aired, I tried to get legal advice on my rights
of free speech. I made two or three attempts to contact people at
Freedom Forum, who I had given permission to use a quote (something
like “in my thirty-some years in the government, I have never seen
anything like the present restrictions on the flow of information from
scientists to the public”) on their calendar. I wanted to know where
I could get, preferably inexpensive, legal advice. Never got a reply.

But then I received a call from the President of the Government
Accountability Project (GAP) telling me that I had won the Ridenaur
Award (including a moderate amount of cash — $10,000 I believe; the
award is named for the guy who exposed the Viet Nam My Lai massacre),
and offering pro bono legal advice. I agreed to accept the latter
(temporarily), signing something to let them represent me (which had
an escape clause that I later exercised).

I started to get the feeling that there may be expectations (strings)
coming with the award, and I was concerned that it may create the
appearance that I had spoken out about government censorship for the
sake of the $. So I called the President of GAP, asking how the
nomination process worked and who made the selection. He mentioned
that he either nominated or selected me. So I declined the award, but
I continued to accept pro bono legal advice for a while.

The principal thing that they provided was the attached letter to
NASA. This letter shows me why scientists drive 1995 Hondas and
lawyers drive Mercedes. I have a feeling that the reader of that
letter had at least one extra gulp of coffee that morning.

Meanwhile Steinn SigurÃ°sson investigated the IBD claims himself:

So: Hansen got pro-bono legal advice, and possibly some media advice (though I doubt he needs that, he’ll have his own AddressBook of contacts) from GAP, which got some of its funding (about 15%) from OSI, including $100k specifically to assist Science and Engineering whistleblowers. The Soros Foundation, of which OSI is part, spend $400 million in 2006.

One can find all this online in 30 seconds through Google.

Yet IBD considers this a “threat to democracy” because these organizations seek to affect public opinion and “lack transparency”.

Do IBD op-ed columns attempt to affect public opinion?
The column was not signed, btw.

I thought Investor’s Business Daily approved of rich people being allowed to spend their money however they liked?

I should note that an additional seven seconds with Google showed that the Government Accountability Project didn’t just reveal their relationship to Hansen, they sent out Press Releases SHOUTING this fact to the world

Contrast this with NewsBusters (part of Media Research Center), who have helped lead the swift boating of Hansen. They sure seem to keep very quiet about the hundreds of thousands of dollars MRC has received from Exxon, don’t they?

Update: Robert McClure talked to GAP and OSI:

GAP’s president Louis Clark and Rick Piltz, director of GAP’s climate science watch program, say they helped Hansen in about February to April of 2006. Their 15-page grant proposal to the Open Society Institute in late July of that year had 15 lines that referred to Hansen, with seven lines recounting what they’d already done for him and two more that said they “remain available to defend Dr. Jim Hansen’s job and to offer legal advice upon request.” Said Clark:

This is happening because it’s much easier to attack the messenger than it is to actually deal with and come to terms with what his message is. Some people have a vested interest in not dealing with the concerns he has raised.

Clark had a minor correction to Hansen’s account: Hansen called them about representation after having been told he was nominated for the Ridenaur Award, rather than GAP calling Hansen to offer counsel.

Amy Weil, a spokeswoman for the Open Society Institute, e-mailed to say her institute is non-partisan and has never given any money to Hansen, adding:

However, OSI does support whistleblower protection agencies and we applaud Dr. Hansen for exposing NASA’s attempts to silence his call for prompt reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Comments

#1 blueinmo
September 29, 2007

From what I’ve read most (not all) posters here do not watch c-span. Well I do I watched the hearings and saw and heard several government scientists tell their story of the Bush Administration re-writing their reports. Changing the facts that the scientists found.
I’ve met a few scientists in my life and have found most just want their research work published-most want to be honest and most know they will never be rich. But if they are apolitical appointee of the Bush adminstration then I know they will lie. >.<
I’ve yet to see anything come out of this administration that came close to the truth. The stench of lies and cover ups from all parts of the Bush Adminstration permiates from every corner. They stole 55,000 pieces of unclassified papers from the National Archives and hide them from the public view. They think they can rewrite history and scientific findings.
And as for Kerry-one of his crew mates came to my town in the fall of 2004 and told us what really happened and he wasn’t one of the men who appeared on TV and he wasn’t paid to come talk to us. Yes Kerry was swiftboated just like McCain and Max Clelland.
The best way to get people to look away is to point at someone else and accuse them of what you are and did. Bush was a coward during the Nam years and he’s still a coward and will always be a coward.
There’s lies and then there’s damn lies.

E-mail from the Union of Concerned Scientists. It was dated
9/28/2007
Dear ______

Congress has given final approval to a bill that will significantly improve the drug review process at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and hold the FDA more accountable, protecting us from unsafe drugs. Thanks in part to your calls and letters, the law includes transparency language that will shine a light on the FDA drug approval process. By opening up the drug review process and documents to public scrutiny, the manipulation of research results becomes much more apparent and thus easier to counteract.

This legislative victory is crucial to public health and safety. Last year, when UCS surveyed nearly 1,000 FDA scientists, one in five reported that they had been asked by their supervisors to provide the public, the news media, and government officials “incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information.” When the unbiased research of qualified scientists was suppressed and distorted, flawed data led the FDA to approve drugs such as Vioxx, Avandia, and Ketek, which later proved to be harmful.

This bill requires that the views of drug reviewers are heard and not suppressed or ignored. In addition, the bill also protects scientists’ right to publish their research, another way to safeguard the scientific integrity of FDA scientists and their work. Unfortunately the bill doesn’t go far enough to restrict conflicts of interest on FDA advisory panels. Nonetheless, the new law will improve the FDA’s drug review process and set the stage for similar reforms at other federal agencies.

Transparency is the cornerstone of scientific integrity–it’s vital to the work of the FDA and all federal agencies to ensure that the work of scientists is not manipulated.

We will closely monitor the FDA’s performance, tracking whether the public gets full access to the information they need. And we will again rely on your support as we continue to push for similar reforms at other federal agencies where science has been politicized and scientists have been intimidated.

UCS surveys have revealed similar problems at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But as long as scientists and citizens continue to play an active role in the fight to ensure scientific integrity and transparency, I am confident we will prevail.

Thank you for your continued dedication to scientific integrity and all you do to help UCS work for a healthy environment and a safer world.

Sincerely,

Michael Halpern
National Field Organizer
Scientific Integrity Program

If you want the web link to the UCS GO FISH!
#2 G
September 29, 2007

Tim Lambert, perhaps you would care to examine some of the data points used in this experiment.

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Can you honestly tell me that this technique of collecting data points is sound?

Can you also argue for Dr Hansen’s initial refusal to post his methods, which required REVERSE ENGINEERING to come up with the results? This is not how a published scientific study is released for peer review.

Any serious analysis follows a Standard Operating Procedures that must be followed TO THE LETTER. If you have bad data points, you do not simply ‘use’ them, or ‘adjust’ them, or toss out those data points. You throw out your ENTIRE study and repeat it. This was clearly NOT done in Mr Hansen’s study.

Have you ever worked in a scientifc lab (not a computer science lab)? I spent 10 years of my life analyzing data in a lab environment – and there is no way I can justify Dr Hansen’s errors. It is worse than ‘sloppy science’ It is flat out deceitful science.

As for his ‘mistake’ in the data, it is being passed off as some ‘Y2K’ glitch – which only highlights the ineptness of the study and the neglect to properly analyze the data he was using for legitimacy.

Are YOU so gullible that you believe a ‘Y2K glitch’ is an acceptable reason for a misrepresentation of a study performed for NASA and the GISS? I expect more form such accredited organizations.

As for your claim of my beleiving a non-scientist blogger, I refer you to Stephen McIntyre and Anthony Watts – who are the people who identified the innaccuracies in Dr Hansens work (and McIntyre also had a hand in debunking Mann’s hockey stick theory’).
#3 stewart
September 29, 2007

I’m just wondering. Seeing as most US economists endorsed Kerry rather than Bush in the ‘)4 election, does that make them tools of foreign domination (or whatever the crank right bugbear is today)?
I’m particularly worried that the 500,000 comment award may go to someone who earned it by their opposition to science in this forum. Maybe that’s why the counter is going so slowly no (I can just see some of the HIV denialists, anti-vaccination cranks, or anti-evolution warriors getting the nod). Shall we start a comment-focused round of whatever at the ’500,000th comment’ thread?
#4 Boris
September 29, 2007

G,

You’re a couple months behind the denial cycle. Microsite issues do not appear to effect trends once homogeneity adjustments are made. Moreover, the satellite temperature record matches extremely well with the GISS analysis. Finally, observations of the physical climate–mass glacier balance, thermal expansion of the oceans, migratory patterns, borehole measurements–all reinforce the surface temperature record.

In case you didn’t notice, the real world is not a lab.
#5 G
September 29, 2007

blueinmo

You obviously suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome, and you should seek help. The scientists I know do NOT believe in the global warming hype. True, they are not climatologists – but they do realize that temperature fluctations have been the norm throughout the earth’s history and all of them agree that there is no way you could quantify what is naturally occurring and what is being caused by man.

All of them (myself included) do believe that we should be better stewards of our environment and that all measures to lessen our impact on the planet should be considered and/or implemented.

The problem with all of that is that the ‘left’ (for lack of a better term) seeks to use TAXATION as a means to institute these changes. This is where the resistance to comply comes in.

As for the 55,000 pages of documents missing form the National Archives, the only person who has been found guilty of stealing from the National Archives is one Sandy ‘socks’ Berger. Your BDS assumption that ‘Bush stole the documents’ only serves to highlight the level of BDS you suffer from.

In reality, these documents have not been ‘stolen’. The majority of them have been reclassified as secret. This started under Clinton, and yes, has continued under the Bush administration. Surprise, surprise we are at war and some documents regarding our surveillance and infiltration techniques have been re-classified.

I simply do not see anything sinister here.

As for the FDA supervisors ‘pressuring’ scinetists to release inaccurate data – I can say with almost complete certainty that this is simply a result of our system of approving drugs. This is more than likely (actually MUCH more than likely) a result corporate pressure, not government pressure.

There is a flawed policy regarding drug approval – but it is at the corporate level – not the government level. I know this from first hand experience.

As for Kerry, there are many people who served with John Kerry, but there are more people who question his service than applaud his service. Those who do applaud his service were directly under him. The majority of those who served WITH Kerry (not under) all have similar opinions of his service record. I commend Kerry’s underlings for supporting him, but so many more who served with Kerry do not tell the same story.

…and you cannot seriously tell me that you believe 3 purple hearts in 3 months with zero days in the infirmary doesn’t at least raise a warning flag to you.

Come on, now! Put aside your blue colored glasses for a minute. Why has he refused to release his full military records?

Kerry enlisted in 1966 for a 6 year commitment, and should have been dischared in 1972, correct? So, whjy is his discharge dated 1978? Why is there no record of Kerry’s naval record from 1972-1978? The answer my blue deluded friend is that Kerry received an other than honorable discharge, and it was Jimmah Carter who finally gave him an honorable discharge in 1978.

Open your eyes and connect the dots.
#6 G
September 29, 2007

Boris, you have OBVIOUSLY never worked in a lab, or had to follow a Standard Operating Procedure.

You admit that some of the data points are bad. This DEMANDS that you toss your entire study and perform it again! You cannot re-use you flawed data points by ‘adjusting’ them or tossing them out. You need to generate good data points. If you have even ONE flawed data point, you need to re-do your study. You do not just pick and choose your data points. You need to use them all, and they all need to be valid. This is defined by your SOP.

This isn’t even debateable. You toss the study. It is flawed. You reacquire data points and perform it again. In this case, it would take years. End of story.
#7 Eli Rabett
September 29, 2007

jc dear, Hansen’s contribution to climate modeling is not working on IPCC models. He and his colleagues at GISS created one of the first GCMs (by the way the code for that has always been public) the results of which were one of the motivating factors in creating the IPCC. Further they have maintained and improved that model, and the results have been discussed in all the IPCC reports.

It would be useful if you ditched the rhetorical tricks at the door
#8 sod
September 29, 2007

You admit that some of the data points are bad. This DEMANDS that you toss your entire study and perform it again! You cannot re-use you flawed data points by ‘adjusting’ them or tossing them out. You need to generate good data points. If you have even ONE flawed data point, you need to re-do your study. You do not just pick and choose your data points. You need to use them all, and they all need to be valid. This is defined by your SOP.

This isn’t even debateable. You toss the study. It is flawed. You reacquire data points and perform it again. In this case, it would take years. End of story.

yes. let s just wait 100 years. sounds like a GREAT idea!
#9 Boris
September 29, 2007

Boris, you have OBVIOUSLY never worked in a lab

And you have obviously never visited the real world. Historical climate data was not collected in a perfect manner. Your solution is to throw all the data away. And you call this inability to deal with real world uncertainty “science.”

I’m sorry reality so differs from your political worldview.

and you cannot seriously tell me that you believe 3 purple hearts in 3 months with zero days in the infirmary doesn’t at least raise a warning flag to you.

Perhaps you should start http://www.purpleheartaudit.org. Me, I’m not going to go back and question the severity of the wounds of our veterans. I consider that extremely disrespectful, especially when it’s done simply because you have differing political views.
#10 G
September 29, 2007

Exactly my point. The data itself is imperfect. Therefore it is not reliable for any meaningful conclusion.

What the ice core data does show is that warming PRECEDED co2 concentration increase. What this means is that warming causes an increase in co2 concentrations, not the other way around – which is exactly the bogus assesment we are being sold.

To be more accurate, we simply do not have the data points needed to assess our impact on the global climate.

As I said before, I’m all for lessening our impact on it’s own merits – but the anthrocentric global warming BS being shoved down our throats and the taxation being proposed to accomplish this are seriously disturbing revelations.

As for tossing out the data, that is the nature of a scientific assessment. I’ve had to re-perform many experiments based on a bad data point or two – even if I could ‘explain away’ the bad data point(s). In the end though, the analysis was invalid, and it needed to be re-done.

Yeah, it sucks – but that is the nature of the beast. You must follow sound scientific procedure. Dr Hansen did not. Therefore, his conclusions are suspect.

To be more honest about his analysis, these are some seriously flawed data points that bring into question the validity of all the data points. There is no way a scientist can just ‘accept’ this data – even with the known flaws.

What other flawed data points are unknown? This is not a controlled experiment. This is a mish-mash of questionable data that some grand conclusion is based on. In other words, it is junk science.
#11 Jc
September 29, 2007

Eli Says:

Further they have maintained and improved that model, and the results have been discussed in all the IPCC reports.

Obviously referring to my comment where I say:

He has worked intelligently on improving the IPCC models, which subsequently lowered the estimates on the present centuries warming.

Which sounds vageuly similar but he then says:

It would be useful if you ditched the rhetorical tricks at the door

Eli, Please stop wasting time pretending you disagree with me by agreeing with me and get back to writing your opus on the falsification of Popper. The world is waiting
#12 dhogaza
September 29, 2007

JC sez sumthin’ ‘orrible:

The government, any government has a right to tell loose cannons to keep their mouth shut and work through the correct channels and be out there in the public forum offering up opinions they may actually know nothing about when it come to policy

Well, no, it doesn’t, and that’s the entire point.

An employee of the federal government has the right to speak as a private citizen as he or she damn well pleases. You can’t represent yourself as speaking *officially* without approval, but privately, yes, you can.

You said the words yourself: “offering opinions”. That’s protected speech, sorry.

Of course, specific circumstances – national security, classified information, etc – can trump one’s right to speak as a private citizen, but merely being a federal employee does not.

G:

You admit that some of the data points are bad. This DEMANDS that you toss your entire study and perform it again! You cannot re-use you flawed data points by ‘adjusting’ them or tossing them out. You need to generate good data points.

I suspect G’s something like a lab tech, not a working scientist.

G – *all* data is imperfect, that’s what error bounds are all about. You’re essentially arguing that all data must be tossed therefore no science can be done, ever. In the lab, or outside the lab.

In this case, we can’t toss the data and regenerate it. Unless you know of a time machine that the rest of the world is unaware of, I suppose. Given that we can’t regenerate it, we must do the best we can with what we have.

Essentially you’re saying “we have to pretend the past doesn’t exist and … therefore … be happy, do nothing!”
#13 elspi
September 29, 2007

G says “You admit that some of the data points are bad. This DEMANDS that you toss your entire study and perform it again!”

All data is bad. That is why there is statistics. If you are looking for prefection you need to be in math. If you didn’t know that you have never taken a real science class. Then again you are obviously just a lying freeper.
#14 Pinko Punko
September 29, 2007

G, you are in pickle juice dirt territory here. Perharps pickle juice china dirt. You don’t have to know what that means to know what it means.
#15 BG
September 29, 2007

Hansen has evolved into a political hack.

Wasn’t he Al Gore’s science adviser on “An Inconvenient Truth?”

Also, his computer models were used 30-some years ago to trumpet Global Cooling.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070919/NATION02/109190067

He has become an embarrassment to NASA, and should be fired.

His discredited hockey stick graph was used to spawn all the hoopla today, including Gore’s discredited movie. You know, the graph from his model which left out the medieval warming period? The one that produced a hockey stick when fed random data?

Leading climatologists are all turning to the theory of the sun as primary regulator of global climate variations, by regulating high energy gamma rays that cause low cloud formation. Read, “The chilling Stars,” for a primer.

Political climatologists like Hansen will eventually go the way of Keynes.
#16 BG
September 29, 2007

Oh, and anyone who listens to anything coming from The Union of Communist Scientists needs his head examined. Be sure whatever they say, the opposite is true.
#17 Boris
September 29, 2007

What this means is that warming causes an increase in co2 concentrations, not the other way around – which is exactly the bogus assesment we are being sold.

When you make a logical error this large, it explains a whole lot.
#18 BG
September 29, 2007

Boris, what was incorrect by the statement?
#19 dhogaza
September 29, 2007

Also, his computer models were used 30-some years ago to trumpet Global Cooling.

Another lie about Hansen …

The right wingnuts are getting desperate, I suppose that’s the silver lining here. They’ve run out of what little science they could muster and all they’ve got now is the swiftboat tactics.
#20 Lee
September 29, 2007

re 115. Parody, right? Please say yes…
#21 Nick Barnes
September 29, 2007

Man, this is better than TV. Swiftboating Kerry and Hansen.
Can we get the Lancet studies into the mix? Who wants popcorn?
#22 Richard Simons
September 29, 2007

G said

As for your claim of my beleiving a non-scientist blogger, I refer you to Stephen McIntyre and Anthony Watts – who are the people who identified the innaccuracies in Dr Hansens work (and McIntyre also had a hand in debunking Mann’s hockey stick theory’).

McIntyre? You mean the guy who, in his ‘debunking’ of Mann’s hockey stick, used degrees where the program called for radians? This is like using metres instead of miles.

I agree with the other respondents: if you think you throw out all the data if there is a problem with one point you have clearly never done any research and have not understood the role of statistics.

To be more accurate, we simply do not have the data points needed to assess our impact on the global climate.

You imply you have thought about this. In your view, what data points are still needed to be able to start assessing our impact on the global climate?

BG wrote

You know, the graph from his model which left out the medieval warming period?

Can you give a link to a serious attempt at recreating global temperatures that clearly shows the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ because all I’ve been able to find points to it not having been a global phenomenon?

BG wonders why ‘warming causes an increase in co2 concentrations, not the other way around’ is referred to as a logical error.

As far as is known, the end of each Ice Age was started by changes in the Earth’s orbit (Milankovitch cycles). Once warming started, it was amplified by CO₂ being released from oceans. That does not rule out the possibility that increasing atmospheric CO₂ could cause global warming. In fact, based on theoretical physics and chemistry an increase in global temperatures has been predicted as a consequence of increased CO₂ for more than a century and for the past few decades the evidence has been coming in to support the prediction.
#23 Tim Lambert
September 29, 2007

Lee, I don’t think BG’s comment was a parody. If it was a parody, every single statement would have been wrong, but he managed to include one correct statement (Hansen was one of the science advisers for Gore.)

Richard, it was McIntyre’s coauthor, McKitrick, who made the degrees/radians oopsie.
#24 cce
September 29, 2007

“Policy experts” like to talk about imaginary concepts like “Carbon intensity” as if the climate cares. Hansen has every right to recommend scenarios that he feels accomplishes the mandate of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which we all signed and ratified. The “policies” that Hansen has recommended hardly require an advanced degree in economics. He favors reducing non-CO2 forcings as rapidly as possible because those are easiest. Phasing out coal power plants that don’t utilize CCS is necessity since there is no way to achieve said mandate without this step. A gradually increasing price on emissions to make it all possible. Those are not complicated policy recommendations. They are excruciatingly obvious.

Hansen has the constitutional right to endorse anyone who he feels like. To suggest that he doesn’t because he is a government employee is the true disgrace. He has every right, as does every government employee.

And Hansen did not conduct “1400 interviews.” That is nonsense from Rep. Darrel Issa who said he got it from “google.” I’d like someone to tell me how Google knows how many “interviews” someone has done. They don’t. What you can do is search Google News for references to James Hansen. Searching for some combination of James Hansen’s name and Global Warming returned about 1400 hits in the entire Google News database up to February 2007. That means that he had been referenced in 1400 articles in that database. In addition, many of the articles are repeats of the same stories taken off of the news wire.

If you limited the search from the date of the 60 minutes interview to February 2007, you got about 400 references. If you do these searches now, you get more references because more news outlets have been retroactively added to google’s news archive.
#25 Hank Roberts
September 29, 2007

Hey, did you read about the auditors who caught the petroleum industry cheating the government of millions of dollars?
#26 JB
September 29, 2007

G “I spent 10 years generating and objectively analyzing scientific data, and I find your [Hansen's] methods and reporting seriously flawed.”

Not just analyzing, mind you, but “objectively analyzing”.

Wow. I’m so impressed — humbled, actually.

I wonder what G would think of ddtruy33′s statements if he “objectively analyzed” them:

ddtruy33: “I work at NASA and have been involved with press releases … And, by the way, his [Hansen's] science is NOT good.”

“Not good”. Now there’s an objective statement.

Yes indeed.
#27 Ray C.
September 29, 2007

What would wingnuts like ddtruy33 be saying, if the corrections to the temperature measurements had raised them a hundredth of a degree?
#28 Eli Rabett
September 29, 2007

Ah, to paraphrase Steve Pastis about our visiting crocs, they are proud members of Mora Fora Meea, a fraternity dedicated to the destruction of every one but them. The crocodiles are our blogging neighbors. Stupid, slow and barely articulate, these particular crocodiles are a disgrace to their species.
#29 Eli Rabett
September 29, 2007

I presume that all those gazing in horror at the surface stations shown at surfacestations.org are in favor of a federal takeover of the substandard ones and full funding through the US government of the entire network. Then again, it is Saturday Night.
#30 Jc
September 29, 2007

Hoggsie

Hansen is the biggest media hound to ever receive a government paycheck.

He’s had around 1400 interactions with the media and gets published whenever he has something to say.

He cavorts around endorsing political candidates becoming science advisor to some.

You and Hansen are suffering from delusional paranoria if you believe in the muzzling story.

Pretty soon Jim is going to be looking outside his window for the dreaded black helicopters. Will you at least promsie to let us know when it happens to you? We/I want to help.
#31 Jc
September 29, 2007

Eli:

Are you a climate scientist or just someone who pretends you are.
#32 Eli Rabett
September 29, 2007

Close enough. Chemical physicist by trade.
#33 trrll
September 29, 2007

You admit that some of the data points are bad. This DEMANDS that you toss your entire study and perform it again! You cannot re-use you flawed data points by ‘adjusting’ them or tossing them out. You need to generate good data points. If you have even ONE flawed data point, you need to re-do your study. You do not just pick and choose your data points. You need to use them all, and they all need to be valid. This is defined by your SOP.
This isn’t even debateable. You toss the study. It is flawed. You reacquire data points and perform it again. In this case, it would take years. End of story.

As a scientist myself, I cannot imagine any serious scientist making such a statement. All data is flawed to some extent, and this is even more so for data that is not collected in a laboratory under carefully controlled conditions, but out in the real world. There are robust, well validated statistical methods for identifying sources of error and bias and calculating their impact on the conclusions.

The insistence that data must be discarded if it is not absolutely flawless is not science at all, but a denialist rationalization–since no data is absolutely flawless, it is always possible to find some excuse to discard conclusions that you do not like. Real scientists have to go beyond “It’s flawed, so I don’t have to consider it,” and delve into the quantitative business of determining what the actual impact of the inevitable “flaws” is on a study’s conclusions.
#34 trrll
September 29, 2007

G wrote:

Sorry Dr. Hansen, but your ‘fudged’ data points and completely bogus claim that 1998 was the warmest year on record are only further proof of your agenda. Your data points are flawed, so your study and your conclusions are flawed.

This is itself an excellent example of “Swift-boating,” because anybody who has bothered to look into the issue even superficially knows that it is a bald-faced lie. In fact, Hansen never claimed that 1998 was the warmest US year on record even before the recent minor correct. Here is what he wrote in his 2001 paper, well before the correction:

The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis

Moreover, even after the corrections, 1998 is still warmer than any previous year on record in terms of global temperature.

This is all on record and easy to find. So you have to wonder about the motivation of anybody who continues to repeat such a transparent lie.
#35 Jc
September 29, 2007

It’s not close enough, Eli. I have a buddy who’s a Phd in chemical engineering from MIT and doesn’t profess to know about the science as much as you allude you allude. Get yourself the requiste credentials and then come back and tell us it is more than “close enough”.

It’s like an accoutant calling themselves an economist…. Really!
#36 Boris
September 29, 2007

He’s had around 1400 interactions with the media and gets published whenever he has something to say[...]You and Hansen are suffering from delusional paranoria if you believe in the muzzling story.

This is getting quite tiresome. I don’t know why I bother, really, except that I have two small children, so I’m stubborn as all hell.

Ahem….You’re repeated mention of 1400 interviews is irrelevant to Hansen’s claim that the administration attempted to muzzle him. It would be like saying “no one attempted to rob Bill Gates, he’s had billions of dollars for years and he still has billions.” That means squat. Do you understand how foolish this repetition of yours is now? Not to mention what cce pointed out about the 1400 number. And you want to be our auditor?
#37 mndean
September 29, 2007

Denialists infesting this thread – countless. Denialists infesting Pat Michaels thread – none to be found. Now why is that – could it be that they don’t want to talk about Michaels?

Is it irresponsible to speculate?

It’s irresponsible NOT to!
#38 JC
September 29, 2007

Of course it is fooolish, boris. You are, I mean. That’s because you can’t deny the fact the guy is pulling a fast one and you’re enabling this fraud.

Has it ever entered your brain that being muzzled actually may mean that and the circumstantial evidence offered suggest otherwise?

If you dont’like the evidence, don’t comment.
#39 Jc
September 30, 2007

mndean

Do you smoke it or inject it?

That has to be the funniest comment I read in a while…. I think. What does it mean exactly?

Just say no, Ok.
#40 dhogaza
September 30, 2007

Hansen is the biggest media hound to ever receive a government paycheck.

I can’t think of a single President who doesn’t beat Hansen in that regard.

I’m glad we have JC. He reinforces the notion that rightwingnuts are inveterate liars.

Even Ben distances himself from JC in an earlier thread, and Ben’s about as stubborn a rightwingnut as one can find here.

And of course …

He’s had around 1400 interactions with the media and gets published whenever he has something to say.

It has been pointed out earlier that 1400 hundred returns on a google search string have been documented.

It was pointed out that this is not the number of interactions Hansen has had with the media.

JC, if your claim were true over the period of time claimed, we’d be seeing him several times a week giving media interviews.

Which is simply false.

Support your claim with real data, please. Doing so might teach you something about science. Show us a source for Hansen’s having 1400 “media interactions”.

Actually your statement is immediately suspect because it doesn’t say “N interactions over T Time”. No one who is serious would state the stat in a way that makes it impossible to determine how often he interacts with the media.

JC, would you mind if I publish your posts in various other places where wafflers think deniers might have something serious to say? Your posts are among the best that show how your personal beliefs overwhelm reality that I know of, other than public figures like Inhofe.
#41 richCares
September 30, 2007

Tim Lambert

I visited the “http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9883″, someone there made mention “…I noticed there was a Deltoid trackback in here somewhere; now it’s gone. As much distaste as I harbor for Tim Lambert, I think it’s probably a better move to acknowledge that he’s commented.” by Slartibartfast

I was curious as to what you may have wrote as it’s a gleeful site now that think they nailed Hansen”

I didn’t comment as they appear to send attack dogs if you disagree or probably just delete it.
#42 Jc
September 30, 2007

Hoggise

Are you “suffering” the same affliction Dean is? Can i just repeat something that may sink in. Hansen is even endorsing poltical candidates from his current throne at NASA.

He has as much credibility about this muzzling caper as Bill Clinton had when he “truthfully” told us he never had sex with that woman. You still believie him? Say it ain’t so.
#43 Tim Lambert
September 30, 2007

rich, I just linked to Goldstein from [this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/investors_business_daily_has_a.php). There was a trackback there for a few minutes, but then it was deleted.

He responded [with this](http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9883#comment-252958):

>I think my last paragraph most certainly does mean something!

>Why is it that when people on the left can’t be bothered to think through what they read, they are allowed to blithely dismiss arguments as nonsensical or “gibberish”? I mean, do they really think that simply pretending toward intelligence grants them some? And why in the world would this flip idiot brand me as “anti-science”? Does he know me? Know any of my positions? Did he arrive at that conclusion using some sort of method he’d like to share?

Hey mea culpa. His writing is so opaque, who can tell what his positions are?
#44 richCares
September 30, 2007

thanks Tim,
that clarifies things a bit, I can see that there appears to be a lot of back slapping over there with a lot of “doesn’t mean anything” comments in attempts to show how smart they are, quite funny, try reading happyfeet (on second thought, don’t – a waste of time)
#45 G
September 30, 2007

trrll

Have you LOOKED at some of the temperature monitoring sites? Are you actually trying to tell me that you would accept temperature data from a site that is located next to am air conditioning exhaust vent?

Just look at some of these sites.

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Caan you honestly tell me that the data generated at these sites is NOT influenced by the exhaust vents, burn barrels, or even on asphalt?

So, you have the data points themselves being flawed, the original analysis being flawed, and yet you somehow think the conclusions drawn can be legitimate?

I am appalled by the notion being espoused by you and others that ‘all data is flawed – but screw it let’s just use it anyways’.

Have you ever followed a SOP? I would guess that you have developed a few – and you should know that data points cannot be ‘picked and chosen’ or ‘corrected’. Your SOP defines your data gathering and your analysis. If you have flawed data points – your analysis is flawed and should not be used.

Now I would love to just ‘explain away’ a bad data point and ignore it – but that is not acceptable scientific procedure. I must re-run my experiment.

Now for others:

I am not advocating trying to go back in time to generate new data points for 1998. I am saying that they need to correct their temperature monitoring stations and gather new data starting from the point at which their data points are corrected. If there is truly ‘global warming’ – then the new and improved data points will reflect that.

Regardless, the data will not show the REASON for an increase in warming. It will simply show a trend of warming.

I’m not even arguing against warming. The earth goes thru naturally occuring cycles of warming and cooling. This would be true if there was no life on earth at all.

All lab workers are supposed to be ‘objective analysts’. If you cannot be objective, you need to find another career. I can’t imagine why anyone would be offended by someone who strives for objectivity (unless of course, you have your own agenda and are threatened by objectivity).

I don’t have an ‘agenda’ here other than analyzing the data and the conclusions drawn from that data.

Much to the contrary, it is those trumpeting anthocentric global warming and advocating taxation as the solution who have the agenda.

I have yet to see even mildly convincing data that would lead me to believe that human activity is a significant factor in global temperatures. Indeed, even Mars is experiencing warming – but I suppose those who are convinced that man is at fault will explain that away as warming due to the two Rovers that we sent up.
#46 JB
September 30, 2007

Eli Rabett said: “I presume that all those gazing in horror at the surface stations shown at surfacestations.org are in favor of a federal takeover of the substandard ones and full funding through the US government of the entire network.”

Actually, I think what they might favor is “Shock and Awe”: bomb the bejesus out of the non-compliant stations. (It worked in Iraq, right?)

I can hear them now: “Adjust for this, Hansen, you $&%@*&!%$$!”
#47 Boris
September 30, 2007

Has it ever entered your brain that being muzzled actually may mean that

We’ve been through the difference between muzzling someone and attempting to muzzle someone. Congratulations on refuting a claim that no one has made.

As for muzzling scientists, the same stuff has been going on at NOAA and the dept. of commerce:

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1107

But you want to assume that Hansen is lying and a fraud based on exactly zero evidence. Float those beliefs on a faith-based forum, because they won’t fly here.
#48 Eli Rabett
September 30, 2007

Well G wanna put up the dough, or just moan. And oh yeah you need to send a boatload of that dough back to 1880, besides which the results are the same
#49 Eli Rabett
September 30, 2007

JC dearest a chemical engineer is not a chemical physicist. Eli does not push oil thru a refinery. You are flailing from ignorance again. Let us just put it this way, most of what I do professionally is gas phase spectroscopy, dynamics and kinetics of small molecules. Get the point yet.
#50 Eli Rabett
September 30, 2007

G the GCMs show the REASON for the trend, increasing GHG concentrations, and models have pretty much got the right order of magnitude since the year dot (~1900)
#51 luminous beauty
September 30, 2007

Is G convincing anybody except himself that he is not a full blown idiot?

Jc? Care to comment? After all, idiots should stick together. Jc, the great Libertarian who won’t defend freedom of speech, because he disagrees with the speaker. Voltaire is spitting on you from beyond the grave, hypocrite.

Stay strong!
#52 JB
September 30, 2007

JC said “It’s [chemical physics is] not close enough, Eli. I have a buddy who’s a Phd in chemical engineering from MIT and doesn’t profess to know about the science as much as you allude you allude.”

Oh, is this the “My buddy is smarter than your buddy” game?

That’s my favorite, next to Global Warming Bingo, which Rip van Winkle (G) wants us to play above.
#53 JB
September 30, 2007

I have a buddy who has a PhD from every other department at MIT, is on the faculty at all the Ivy league schools, has 3 Nobel Prizes (in chemistry, physics and literature), just discovered the “meaning of life” (which has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in Energy $ Environment), and who thinks global warming is hogwash — though he does not like to brag and does not pretend to know everything there is to know about ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

So there, Eli.
#54 richCares
September 30, 2007

jb says “So there, Eli.”

Can you give us links to this peer reviewed research, I would be very interested as I have not yet found a single piece of peer reviewed research showing global warming as hogwash. I am not saying “put up or shut up” just “put up” to substantiate your comments
#55 dhogaza
September 30, 2007

richCares – JB is just showing how stupid JC’s “my friend’s smarter than your friend’s” arugment from authority is.

G – for someone to have no agenda, who claims to be science-literate, who claims to have extensive lab experience … you sure do an excellent job of trolling with some of the lowest-level right wingnut lies about climate science.

If you’re as smart as you want us to think you are, you can figure out these lies yourself. There’s really no point in anyone here answering you. Buy a textbook on climate science, read Real Climate, etc.
#56 richCares
September 30, 2007

dhogaza, thanks, I suspected that as it did appear humorous, but I really would like some denialist to quote peer reviewed research from their viewpoint

then I finally realized, they don’t know what “peer reviewed” means, that puts them at a severe disadvantage, we need a way to even the paying field for them, something other than “laughing” at them.
#57 trrll
September 30, 2007

Have you LOOKED at some of the temperature monitoring sites? Are you actually trying to tell me that you would accept temperature data from a site that is located next to am air conditioning exhaust vent?

If I could compensate for the effect of the air conditioning exhaust vent, certainly. Most such biases will average out, anyway.

So, you have the data points themselves being flawed, the original analysis being flawed, and yet you somehow think the conclusions drawn can be legitimate?

Perfect data and perfect analysis does not exist. Yet legitimate, valid conclusions are drawn all of the time in the presence of error. It is not scientific to merely point at a flaw as an excuse for discarding conclusions that you don’t like. With real world data, you can always kind some kind of a flaw, if you look hard enough, so that’s just a cheap shot, not science. The science is in showing whether the impact of the inevitable flaws can alter the conclusions.

A lot of error is simply going to average out, because different stations are going to be imperfect in different ways. A constant bias, if recognized, can simply be subtracted out. So you would need to show that the existing methods of calibrating stations and correcting for biases are not doing the job. More importantly, we aren’t actually all that interested in the absolute temperature at any particular location; we are interested in how the temperature is changing over time. So we we don’t have to worry about any “flaw” that merely imposes a constant bias–to make a case for the conclusions being a consequence of the flaws, you would need to establish that the “flaw” is changing over time, and that data from “flawed” stations shows a different trend over time than data from stations without “flaws.” If you actually want to make a scientific case, rather than merely a rhetorical one, you can start by showing that the trends over time of the “badly sited” stations, after applying the existing corrections for known biases, are different from the “well sited” stations. This is just basic science.
#58 richCares
September 30, 2007

ddtruy33 says” Hansen had given over 1400 interviews, including 15 the month he claimed he was being “censored”, but was ignoring his employers policy and got called on it.”

as that is more than 3.8 interviews per day, Unlikely!
1400 / 365 = 3.8 is foolish and they don’t even know how foolish this statement is.
#59 David Marjanović
September 30, 2007

What the ice core data does show is that warming PRECEDED co2 concentration increase. What this means is that warming causes an increase in co2 concentrations, not the other way around – which is exactly the bogus assesment we are being sold.

Stop shouting and calm down.

Whenever warming happens for reasons unrelated to CO2, for example because of the various cycles of the Earth’s orbit, axial tilt and whatnot, the warming oceans and permafrost soils release CO2 because gases dissolve better in cold water than in warm water.

This has been the usual case in the history of the Earth.

But right now, we have an increase in CO2 for reasons unrelated to warming: we simply burn stuff. What happens when CO2 increases for reasons other than warming?

We have a few such cases in the geological record, for example about 66 million years ago, when massive flood basalt eruptions blew lots of CO2 into the air, or 55 million years ago, when lots of methane clathrate deposits on the sea floor discharged. What happens in such cases?

Warming.

And what happens when CO2 decreases for reasons other than cooling? We’ve had that some 700 million years ago, when silicate lava on the continents weathered, taking up CO2 from the air. It got colder, resulting in the “Snowball Earth” episodes. We’ve also had it about 15 million years ago, when the Tibetan Plateau was raised above the tree line and started weathering on a grand scale. This made the current series of ice ages possible.

Don’t act as if you could escape from the fact that CO2 absorbs infrared.
#60 dd456
October 1, 2007

Hansen was also the basis of a story in the Washinton Post that warns of an impending ICE AGE within 50 years … back in 1971, when we were in a global cooling scare.

The headline was ” U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming” (July 9, 1971), and was based on a paper appearing in the journal Science that same day.

It warned readers that “… we could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts…”

The scientist quoted was S. I. Rasool, who reported coming to the chilling conclusions based on a new computer program developed by his colleague at NASA, JIM HANSEN …

It gets better: the Washinton Post writer contacted a top scientist in the Nixon administration (Gordon MacDonald), who said “… the findings are consistent with estimates I and others have made.”
#61 dd456
October 1, 2007

The maps published in the 70s showing the worrisome increase in Arctic ice coverage look a lot like the maps today showing the worrisome decrease.
#62 dd456
October 1, 2007

A story about polar bear populations growing enough that locals are looking to increase hunting quotas:

http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/sep17_07bear.html

Reconciling with other press stories that report PROJECTIONS of extinction in 50+ years makes one wonder.
#63 Jc
October 1, 2007

JB

Don’t be silly.

Eli was mouthing off about his credentials implying he knows all there is to know about AGW. In this case ignorance is not bliss. There are people smarter than he is from the science field who don’t profess to know enough about AGW to speak as an expert.

A good analogy is the GP to the heart specialist or a urologist. A GP doesn’t know enough about the subject and therfore sends the patient to the expert.
Eli is just blowing a trumpet not realizing it is a kiddies toy he’s got in his mouth.
#64 Pinko Punko
October 1, 2007

Yes, dd456, that does make me wonder. Kind of like wondering about how anyone can freeze to death when I’m nice and toasty, or how polar bears can go extinct when we still have zoos. Or how you are make an argument ad Time magazine cobaggery from 1971! Read some other stories on this blog about what getting “Rasooled” means.
#65 Jc
October 1, 2007

Illuminous beauty says:

Is G convincing anybody except himself that he is not a full blown idiot?I

IJc? Care to comment? After all, idiots should stick together. Jc, the great Libertarian who won’t defend freedom of speech, because he disagrees with the speaker. Voltaire is spitting on you from beyond the grave, hypocrite.I

Voltaire would agree with me and thank me for the effort, LB. You don’t even realize or understand the meaning of free speech. Hansen’s doing a con job As he appeared as muzzled as a dog gorging on raw meat. The self-important twit is behaving like a loose cannon that thinks organizational procedures ought not to apply to someone as important as he is. He should feel free to scare the kids any time he feels like it.

Example.

Every large investment bank has stock analysts. It would be unthinkable and firing offense if a senior executive gave a diverging opinion on a stock to the public without at least discussing it with the management and getting clearance to do so. Getting the boot for not following procedure in this case is NOT a reduction in anyone’s free speech rights.

This is just silly talk.
#66 Jc
October 1, 2007

Pink Punk has it right, agent 456.

Polar bears can go extinct and become a pest at the same time in the AGW world we live in.

Add it to the warmlist as:

Polar bears face both extinction and massive explosion in numbers.

Here’s the warmlist:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

And your analogy sucks Pinko punk. It makes no sense at all. It’s bizarre really.
#67 Boris
October 1, 2007

As he appeared as muzzled as a dog gorging on raw meat.

Again with this? How embarrassing.
#68 JB
October 1, 2007

JC: “Don’t be silly.”

I wasn’t.

“Eli was mouthing off about his credentials implying he knows all there is to know about AGW.”

Perhaps you can direct me to the post by Rabett above implies that “he knows all there is to know about AGW.”

“Eli is just blowing a trumpet not realizing it is a kiddies toy he’s got in his mouth.”

If anyone is blowing anything, it is you — hot air.

Rabett does not need to impress people with his credentials. What he has written on his blog on climate related subjects speaks for itself.

Here’s a smattering:

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/06/continuing-our-series.html

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/05/parsing-greenhouse-gas-driven-sea.html

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/07/temperature-anonymice-gave-eli-new.html
#69 trrll
October 1, 2007

Hansen was also the basis of a story in the Washinton Post that warns of an impending ICE AGE within 50 years … back in 1971, when we were in a global cooling scare.
The headline was ” U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming” (July 9, 1971), and was based on a paper appearing in the journal Science that same day.
It warned readers that “… we could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts…”
The scientist quoted was S. I. Rasool, who reported coming to the chilling conclusions based on a new computer program developed by his colleague at NASA, JIM HANSEN

This kind of organized guilt-by-association character assassination, made famous by Joe McCarthy, more than justifies the use of the term “swiftboating.”

Just for the record, let’s summarize what actually happened:

1. A paper, written by somebody else, not Hansen, thanked Hansen, not for a climate model, but for a program to do some basic physics calculations.

2. The paper did not actually predict an ice age, but it did suggest that if particulate pollution in the atmosphere got several times worse (and if other factors, like CO2, stayed the same), and this were sustained for several years, that it could produce a degree of cooling sufficient to trigger an ice age.

3. This was picked up by a newspaper, that published a sensationalistic article claiming that we were facing an ice age.

4. Now, we have an organized campaign to discredit a researcher, by claiming that he was the “source” of the newspaper article–much like attributing the conclusion of a paper to Texas Instruments because one of the authors on a paper used a TI calculator.

Note that it obviously took some research to build this chain of guilt-by-association, and the people who did so clearly went to some difficulty to obscure the actual facts (and the same article used a similar guilt-by-association deception to falsely imply that Hansen received three-quarters of a million dollars from Soros). So this was not some kind of accident or misunderstanding, but deliberate dishonesty. Somebody is going to quite a bit of trouble to attempt to discredit Hansen. And probably getting paid to do so.
#70 Jc
October 1, 2007

Perhaps you can direct me to the post by Rabett above implies that “he knows all there is to know about AGW.

How’s this:

Let us just put it this way, most of what I do professionally is gas phase spectroscopy, dynamics and kinetics of small molecules. Get the point yet.

JB

Wow! I would say nuke engineering is that too, hey?

No offense, I would expect Eli to have published a few papers on climate science if as he implies he knows the stuff. I don’t mean his blog either. Is there?
#71 richCares
October 1, 2007

trrll, you really shouldn’t clarify this for believers of debunked right wing talking points, their intellectual level can’t handle it. they are born with very large hands, so that they can cover their eyes and ears at the same time when you give them accurate information. calling them stupid is not an insult, but a factual description. they are not even aware that we know all those stupid talking points.
#72 JB
October 1, 2007

JC:

That post most certainly does not claim he knows “all there is to know about AGW”.

That’s simply a gross exaggeration on your part. Anyone here can see that.

Rabett’s statement indicates that his area of expertise is directly relevant to climate science, which it is.

Anyone who knows anything about the science of the earth’s atmosphere (a critical part of climate science) knows that it deals with “gas phase spectroscopy, dynamics and kinetics of small molecules”.

The latter group obviously does not include yourself.
#73 John Cross
October 1, 2007

Jc: For what its worth, I have read Eli’s posts for a long time. They are always well founded in science and explain things quite well. He knows his stuff. If you don’t like you can go over his stuff and point out the errors.

But I did like this quote from you There are people smarter than he is from the science field who don’t profess to know enough about AGW to speak as an expert.

If I can just reword it a bit There are people less smart than he is from the science denial field who do profess to know enough about AGW to speak as an expert.

Regards,

JC (John Cross)
#74 jre
October 1, 2007

If I might suggest a reordering of priorities … before going to Eli’s excellent site, I would appreciate it if Jc would learn a few html tags other than “b.” Specifically, Jc, let me point you to “blockquote.”
It goes like this:

Stuff you are quoting

When you do this, it makes clear which words are yours, and which are someone else’s.
Why is this important? To avoid causing cognitive dissonance among your readers.

Please don’t take this personally, Jc, but your history of comments had led me to the impression that you are not, perhaps, the sharpest blade in the box. Kind of a butter knife among the straight razors, if you get my drift. Imagine, if you will, my surprise when I came upon this:

Let us just put it this way, most of what I do professionally is gas phase spectroscopy, dynamics and kinetics of small molecules. Get the point yet.

…

Posted by: Jc

Now, granted, there was a mishmash of context before and after that passage that would have enabled me to parse the whole comment had I read it carefully, but there was nothing in its format to set those words apart from the posting commenter’s. For a few dizzying moments, I had to consider the possibility that Jc, of all people, knew from gas phase spectroscopy. Then I went upstream a little bit, realized that the confusing bit was a quote from Eli, and I was back where I started. So, please, please, Jc, help us out. At least use quotation marks.
#75 Dano
October 1, 2007

John Cross is aptly illustrating Dano’s rule:

“when anyone, anywhere says anything that doesn’t agree with a small minority’s ideology, marginalize them.”

Best,

D
#76 Lee
October 1, 2007

also Jc’s unerringly idiotic snarky endorsement of 162 in 166:
“A story about polar bear populations growing enough that locals are looking to increase hunting quotas: [link omitted]
Reconciling with other press stories that report PROJECTIONS of extinction in 50+ years makes one wonder.
Posted by: dd456 | October 1, 2007 3:48 AM”
—
Apparently none of all y’all deniers have heard of subpopulations or local ecosystems. That polar bear population is on the northeast coast of Canada, an area which is a “convergent ice ecosystem.” See, even though arctic sea ice cover is declining dramatically, the remaining ice tends to get blown to the NE coast of Canada and to Greenland, so the ice there is relatively less impacted. And that is precisely where the local polar bear subpopulation (notice the prefix ‘sub’) are doing well. Bears in divergent ice ecosystems are expected to be much more severely impacted, much sooner, by declining sea ice – and a growing subpopulation right at the least impacted local convergent ice ecosystem does not contradict that.
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/09/polar_bears_disappear.html

Further – this is a hunted and managed bear population. The bear harvest has been set for decades to keep the population in check so as to minimize bear-human problems. This means that hunting is used to intentionally keep the population below natural carrying capacity. An increase in numbers for a subpopulation already well below carrying caapaity does NOT tell us anything about whether the natural carrying capacity is increasing or decreasing. It is entirely possible that ice loss is causing a decline in how many bears the region COULD carry, while at the same time an artificially low population of bears is climbing in numbers toward the new lower carrying capacity. But again, this only applies to that one subpopulation in that one convergent ice ecosystem.
#77 sod
October 1, 2007

hm. two completely contradicting article, citing the same guy:

IQALUIT – Climate change is not hurting polar bear populations in the Davis Strait area of Nunavut, according to Dr. Mitch Taylor, manager of wildlife research and a polar bear biologist with the GN’s Department of Environment.

http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/sep17_07bear.html

and:

Nunavut researchers looked for the missing bears this summer. They found some, says Mitch Taylor, Nunavut’s director of wildlife research, but not nearly as many as hunters hoped. And not enough to justify the number of bears currently being shot.

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/70928_544.html
#78 Gelbstoff
October 1, 2007

Dear ddtruy33,

You claimed that you work for NASA – What is your scientific expertise? Many of your claims are clearly wrong. I strongly suggest that you read the post by David Marjanović. He explains the issue with great clarity. The book “The Discovery of Global Warming” is also a very good source. With respect to Dr. Hansen, reasonable people may agree or disagree with how he deals with the media. Similarly, many scientists may disagree with some aspects of his research – this is the way science works. However, I do not know any serious scientists who will say that Hansen’s science is “no good”.

G.
#79 Jc
October 1, 2007

John Cross:

Thanks for all the lessons. To summarize what i will be taking home with me from the lecture:

1. you think Eli is a climate scientist because you think he is.

2.You’re a lecturing little boor.

3. You know a little computer language which you think maks you appear intelligent.

Thanks. hat about confrims what i have always thought of your comments.
#80 Jc
October 1, 2007

Dano again proves that smoking illict drugs has about the same effect and injecting.
#81 trrll
October 2, 2007

Gelbstoff writes

Dear ddtruy33,
You claimed that you work for NASA – What is your scientific expertise?

Well, if he actually works for NASA, then he knows that his statement that

A few weeks ago, [Hansen] had to revise the claim that 9 of the top 10 warmest years occurred in the last 12 years. This had been a key plank used to promote policy change.

is false, making him a liar. ddtruy33 says that “I work at NASA and have been involved with press releases.” Could he be the guy in charge of censoring Hansen’s press releases?

On the other hand, maybe he doesn’t work at NASA at all. Which would also make him a liar.
#82 Nick Barnes
October 2, 2007

I love Deltoid; it’s such a troll magnet. You couldn’t make this stuff up. I particularly like comment #179, in which the writer demonstrates that:

1. He can’t spell.

2. He can’t punctuate.

1. He can’t count.
#83 Jc
October 2, 2007

Nick:
What I love about Deltoid is Lambert of course. He brings up great topics that seem to flush out the angry, intolerant lefties from their burrows as well as those who don’t have much to say other than demonstrate they would be great proof readers working for law firms at 10 buck an hour + 1/2lunch. You fall in the last category. Please remember that there is a reason the lawyer is earning 400 bucks an hour while you’re earning 10 bucks as a proofreader in some dingy area in the middle of the floor without natural light. The big guy has the corner office.

Please check my typos..
#84 Boris
October 2, 2007

Could he be the guy in charge of censoring Hansen’s press releases?

Good point.

I’d also like to point out that the guy who was denying scientist interviews for political reasons at the Dept. of Commerce is named Chuck Fuqua. No point, just wanted to share that.
#85 John Cross
October 2, 2007

Jc: What! I could make $10 an hour proof reading! It sure beats my $6.50 job at McDondalds! At McDondalds I also have to clean out the washrooms, but in another month they give me a brush!!

Regards,
JC
#86 Nick Barnes
October 2, 2007

Jc: if you want to pay me to proof-read your comments, my rates at work start at £70/hour and go up steeply from there. Forget “bucks” – I won’t touch new contracts in flabby banana-republic currencies such as USD. Once burned, twice shy.
But feeding trolls like you isn’t work, it’s a labour of love. I put in ten minutes from time to time, pro bono publico.
#87 J.
October 2, 2007

Nick Barnes wrote:

I love Deltoid; it’s such a troll magnet. You couldn’t make this stuff up. I particularly like comment #179, in which the writer demonstrates that [...] He can’t count.

In the troll’s defense, he did manage to count as high as 2. It was only when he tried to work with larger numbers that he ran into difficulties.
#88 Jc
October 2, 2007

John:
Please take the advice with all the best intentions. You have oversold yourself at $6.5 an hour. Aim lower and you’ll be happier.

Nick:
Stg 70 an hour. Wow! I’m impressed. You must be one those bigshots or something.
#89 John Cross
October 2, 2007

Jc: Perhaps you are right. But I think that leaves me only one place I can go – where do you work?

And with that, I have engaged in enough mud slinging (fun though it is to act 12 again). And, Tim please feel free to disemvowel me in order to return this form to something resembling the topic!

Regards,
John
#90 Nick Barnes
October 2, 2007

I would also submit merrily to disemvowelling at the whim of our Great Leader.
#91 oconnellc
October 2, 2007

John and Nick,

You are confused. The key to getting disemvowelled here is not to be abusive or off topic. Just disagree with Tim. Works for me…
#92 dhogaza
October 2, 2007

You are confused. The key to getting disemvowelled here is not to be abusive or off topic. Just disagree with Tim. Works for me…

Then why did you apologize for being abusive after Tim recently disemvowelled you?

Are you like Larry Craig, trying to back out of a guilty plea a bit late?
#93 Eli Rabett
October 2, 2007

Eli recommends self disemvowelment.

jc y r t f ln, t f cntrl n ttlly nts. G d hd n cv n dn’t cm t gn. dmn wll mn t! y n yr scmmng slm bckts c a g t hll.

Ah, that feels good!
#94 oconnellc
October 2, 2007

dhogaza, it’s called sarcasm. You started the namecalling by referring to me as a liar, a ho and a f***ing whore. I replied and called you a nitwit. Tim disemvowelled me. I sent him an email and asked him why. He told me that it was because I had questioned him in the past. You tell me which is more abusive. Nitwit or fucking whore?
#95 Boris
October 2, 2007

thy’r bnch f dcks.

(qck! qck!)
#96 oconnellc
October 2, 2007

Boris, nice. I expected you to say something like:
“Yawn”
“This again”
or
“How boring”

Way to mix it up!
#97 Nick Barnes
October 2, 2007

Eli, I think Tim disemvowels more effectively. You left an ‘a’.
Bring on the disemvowelling fork!
Or is it more of a spoon?
Or a corkscrew?
Or like one of those cherry-stoning devices?
#98 Boris
October 2, 2007

Thanks.

BTW, I’m with you on the “fucking whore” thing. dhogaza went over the line on that one and deserved to be desemvoweled.
#99 Jc
October 2, 2007

“You tell me which is more abusive. Nitwit or fucking whore?”

In your case, hoggsie, definitely nitwit as it’s closer to the truth. A male slut is a good thing.

By the way stop behaving like big cry baby, emailing the owner if he decides he doesn’t like one of your posts. You over sized big mary,
#100 Gelbstoff
October 2, 2007

These comments are getting a bit sophomoric and have diluted the discussion of an important issue.

So, ddtruy33,are you still out there? Are you really a NASA person?

Gelbstoff