Pharyngula

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | November 29, 2009 11:46 PM

Gonna be hard to sway this one.

Dunno 'bout that: The totals are still in the single-digit thousands; if Pharyngula has the usual ratio of lurkers to regular posters, and we all vote, we should be able to make a dent.

Posted by: Max Fagin | November 29, 2009 11:55 PM

No can do on this one. "Strong, Effective, Fair" to me translates as "Bureaucratic, Ambiguous and Counterproductive." Regardless of what labels are applied to whatever comes out of Copenhagen, I see no reason to think that this is going to be any different than Kyoto. i.e. "Strong, Effective, Fair" and yet completely counterproductive and worthless.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | November 30, 2009 12:02 AM

'course the whole poll-skewing thing is all about how worthless internet polls are...and it's just as worthless no matter who wins...

Posted by: Owen | November 30, 2009 12:06 AM

I frankly find it preposterous that anyone would take documents yielded by the CRU hack as an indictment of all climate science, let alone evidence of a massive conspiracy.

The American Meteorological Society said it better than I can—"For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited."

Posted by: Prof. Bleen | November 30, 2009 12:18 AM

littlejohn: The running total is in very small numbers at the top of the page linked in the OP.

Heh—since PZ's post above, 167 have been counted in, vs. 11 counted out. The Pharyngulization has begun.

Posted by: Sili | November 30, 2009 12:20 AM

Fascinating how a few leaked emails can somehow invalidate the IR absorption lines of CO₂ in my ever aging copy of The Rubber Bible.

Posted by: llewelly | November 30, 2009 12:20 AM

andyinsdca | November 29, 2009 11:54 PM:

Perhaps you need to read the file "HARRY_READ_Me.txt." from the hacked emails/files

Posted by: jojame | November 30, 2009 12:27 AM

Woah, so much wrong here. You're kooky for not buying into global warming? Have you not heard of the butchering of science by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia? Is there no reason to be a skeptic?

Do you have evidence of poll skewing other than what you're attempting now? Why are you linking to internet polls knowing full well what will happen?

The poll is asking is you are for legislation to combat global warming. You don't have to be a denier to be against legislation that would be harmful.

Posted by: BlueEyedVideot | November 30, 2009 12:32 AM

Simply astonishing how the energy companies can turn petro-dollars into global warming disbelief. P.T. Barnum was right, there are suckers born every minute--unfortunately they come with votes.

Posted by: golemxiv | November 30, 2009 12:36 AM

Well, you do not have to trust the denialists, you can take it straight from the horses mouth (That is from the top alarmists) - enjoy one of their leaked e-mails:

From: Tom Wigley [...]
To: Phil Jones [...]
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer [...]
Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that theland also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips—higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.
Why is it important? Because over the course of the 20th century the 40's blip leading into the cooling 50's 60's and 70's is a screaming refutation of co2 as a climate driver.
And I think newspapers will be able to explain that to your average Jerry Springer viewer. Unfortunately for Phil and Tom.

Posted by: jojame | November 30, 2009 12:41 AM

@golemxiv #20
I haven't seen that e-mail yet. Every time I read them I feel sick. Hopefully people will pick up their heads out of the sand and read some of the e-mails.

Posted by: jojame | November 30, 2009 12:46 AM

@John #21
Why is that only polls that disagree with PZ Myers gets linked then? Do you really believe the makers of the poll have an agenda? If they did why don't they skew it themselves? And isn't this poll skewing adding your own propoganda?

Posted by: glacierman | November 30, 2009 12:50 AM

"Posted by: Nibien | November 30, 2009 12:42 AM

"@BlueEyedVideot #18
And there are many people that stand to gain from global warming legislation. How do you know that you aren't a sucker?"

Hundreds, if not thousands, of peer reviewed journals."

How many of them are on the government payroll who are funded and stand to make a lot of money if they continue to ride this AGW/CC gravy train they are on?

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | November 30, 2009 12:56 AM

Billy Bob Joe James :

You are a fucking scientifically illiterate retard. You couldn't understand a random Arxiv paper even if your life depended on it. You are an American, no?

Posted by: Martin | November 30, 2009 1:00 AM

I just encountered the word Pharyngulate and found it immensely funny, so I looked it up in the urban dictionary and found this Pharyngulate. There's only 79 thumbs up to the best explanation of the term and why not honor the word and mr. Myers by Pharyngulating the "poll" here? :D

Posted by: Jason A. | November 30, 2009 1:04 AM

Sili #12:

Fascinating how a few leaked emails can somehow invalidate the IR absorption lines of CO2 in my ever aging copy of The Rubber Bible.

Quoted for truth in light of all the kooks posting in this thread.

Posted by: Nibien | November 30, 2009 1:06 AM

There is also evidence that goes against global warming. There is no consensus except among those colluding as evident from the e-mails."

Straight out the creationist playbook. "There's a controversy, really, all kinds of scientists agree it's a fraud! Lets let the ignorant morons who haven't taken a single college level course in the subject make up their minds from the data presented by this fair and balanced panel of journalism majors!" -- See, don't even need the change the words.

How many of them are on the government payroll who are funded and stand to make a lot of money if they continue to ride this AGW/CC gravy train they are on?

Two for the price of one. Now, instead of scientists disagreeing, it's a "LIBERAL INTELLECTUAL ELITE CONSPIRACY!!11"

And, remember kids, if Fox News taught us anything, it's that the money is in being a college professor or better yet, a grad student who is reading and publishing papers on the subject, not a talking head who spouts whatever the ignorant G.E.Ds want to hear.

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | November 30, 2009 1:08 AM

Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do!

Actually, no, it's pretty clear to most people here, you are unskilled and unaware of it :

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

To see just how unskilled and unaware you actually are in the real world of science, just mosey on over to the Arxiv and take a gander at any random paper there, cowboy.

The short answer is : you're an illiterate cretin.

Posted by: Nibien | November 30, 2009 1:12 AM

You can already see them alluding to the nefarious socialist global warming world conspiracy cabal...

Actually, I clicked that moronic blog link that was linked, and scrolled down to the first three comments -- all three were exactly that. With, of course, allusions that a liberal college is expected to be Nazi-like.

Posted by: silkworm | November 30, 2009 1:27 AM

Why won't the denialists call the hacked CRU emails what they really are ... "stolen." Not only are the denialists in denial about climate change science, they are also in denial about the ethics of the hacking.

The content of the stolen emails do not indicate that the CRU are up to no good. They however indicate that the denialists do not understand the terminology being used. The CRU scientists have used terms like "hiding data" and "tricks", but the denialists being ignorant (wilfully?) of the scientific meaning of these terms, see only a political meaning which is not there in reality, but which is convenient for them to use.

Posted by: Bruce the Canuck | November 30, 2009 1:40 AM

I see the denialists are flooding in. This will probably go on for a few weeks, until the blowback starts. In the end, this will be seen as the ad-hom swiftboating it is, part of the crazification of the US right which it will take decades to recover from.

>Perhaps you need to read the file "HARRY_READ_Me.txt." from the hacked emails/files

I have read much of it. But being a professional software developer myself, I mostly just found it funny (and familiar). Much of the code is temporary hacks used during development. My main take-away was that the CRU is seriously underfunded.

>[from a CRU email]...explain the 1940s warming blip...0.15 adjustment...

And again, a denier shows what happens when you combine ignorance with hostility while reading technical discussions. The "1940s blip" has been openly and extensively discussed for years

>And there are many people that stand to gain from global warming legislation...

Global production of oil is worth about $6 BILLION dollars PER DAY. Coal sales, at least $2 Billion - each day. Generations of wars, murders of union leaders, industrial espionage, hiring of mercenaries, toppling of governments, lying, and manipulation of elections have gone on over these resources. Streets are named after assasinated coal miner organizers in my home city.

Now, tell me again how scary the alternative energy crowd is.

Posted by: blf | November 30, 2009 2:16 AM

Unfortunately, C. Claw, you're using big technical words—like "sink”—so the Big Oil is Always Right mouth-breathers won't have a clew what you're talking about, and will ignore the point you've made.

Posted by: MadScientist | November 30, 2009 2:50 AM

That's funny ... I'm in a meeting at the moment which will run until the end of the week. There are quite a few people from those Big Bad Oil Companies (tm) and they all take global warming seriously and will soon be updating me on a number of their efforts over the past year. Many hundreds of millions per year are spent by some industries to address the issues; it is really primarily a problem with politicians' concerns for votes holding back any further progress (and in some cases coal lobbies fighting because they think it will be bad for business). Given all the political games going on, the best outcome I can imagine for policies is for some countries to take unilateral action and severely penalize imports from countries which are not making any serious efforts.

Posted by: ad | November 30, 2009 3:29 AM

silkworm, i'm a lefy atheist variety denialist, so go get fucked. Why are The Greens opposing the ETS legislation? That's why Labor needs a handfull of Liberal senators to whore (I mean vote) with them, to outflank those denialist rightwing fundie creationist Greens.

Posted by: Mike Wagner | November 30, 2009 3:33 AM

I wouldn't be able to vote either way as I'm not sure what evidence I've seen in either direction is of any use.

I see the terms climate change and global warming used interchangeably, which seems incorrect to a literal minded primate like me. I see butchered reports in the media that don't make any sense when you read them.

And then arguments saying man is responsible for heating up the planet. And then another argument saying that man produces only 3% of all CO2 and couldn't possibly do it.

Okay, I obviously believe in climate change, because we've all seen evidence of that. And there is a current trend where the Earth is getting warmer. But who should I read to get past the reactionary 2012 apocalypse screaming retards? Is this any more than another climatic blip like the 'Little Ice Age'?

Whose research do you look at in order to be sure that it's unbiased and not set to meet corporate agendas on either side of the issue.

When it comes to biology vs. creationism, it's a simple matter of religion=bullshit.

But then with the environment it's become a matter of oil companies vs. organizations that want to become the next energy monopoly.

I don't know whose poop tastes better. :(

Posted by: Vene | November 30, 2009 3:38 AM

It occurs to me that in post #39 I made a typo "So, even if every aspect of global warming is true, we would still want to take measures to reduce carbon emissions." should be "So, even if every aspect of global warming is untrue, we would still want to take measures to reduce carbon emissions."

Anyways, pft, what makes you think the past's temperatures have any bearing on today's ecosystem and what it can handle? Should we think that a prebiotic atmosphere is just fine because it happened before on Earth? Life will continue, there is no doubt about that, but will it include us?

Also, you said, "ice core data suggest CO2 lags temperature by 800 years" but I have to ask, has the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide ever increased this quickly in the past? this graph suggests not. At least, not in the past 600,000+ years.

Face it, we are dumping massive amounts of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Sunlight hits it, excites electrons and then when go back to their lower energy level, they release heat. This is not voodoo, this is science. Physics and chemistry back up climate change.

Posted by: Nibien | November 30, 2009 3:43 AM

When it comes to biology vs. creationism, it's a simple matter of religion=bullshit.

That's terribly ignorant. Even if religion wasn't false, it still wouldn't matter, because we have overwhelming scientific evidence that we did evolve, rendering the belief in creationism irrational regardless.

Just like we have overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change. Unless you're really taking the angle that nearly every PhD and grad student is on this huge conspiracy, in which case please give up your 'skeptic' card.

And, lets just run with this obviously false hypothetical situation that all the human activity on the planet does not, in any way, shape or form effect the climate at the moment. Why the bloody hell would you still think it's acceptable to push tons of pollution (which, as other posters have pointed out, still have severe negative ecological effects) into the atmosphere?

Even if this hypothetical situation is true, the fact of the matter is the reason the talking heads promote climate-change ignorance in their followers is not for 'scientific integrity and following the truth' it's so they and their pals can continue to make as much money as possible, with as little environmental pollution regulation as possible -- and that is wrong regardless.

So, at the end of the day, even if those ignorant of science wish to claim there is no man-induced climate change, it should have no bearing on our ecological policies, so they should sit down, shut up, and take some damn college classes in the subject before they spout off about it.

Posted by: Mordred | November 30, 2009 3:59 AM

Evidence for man-made climate change is sketchy. I know it's cheap, but as Penn Gilette correctly pointed out, in 1975, we were told a new Ice-age was coming. Heck, there were plans to somehow darken the Ice on the poles to heat up the earth.

Also, the environmentalists have a serious case of "cry wolf", preaching gloom and doom since the get-go. If their "predictions" had come true, the whales would all be extinct, all forests turned into paper and we'd all be dead anyhow because the ozone layer would be gone.

So you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical that the 0.038% of the atmosphere made up by CO2, of which man only contributes a tiny 5%, is truly the major factor it's made out to be.

As for the emails, there may not be a conspiracy, but the way that data is handled is, to say the least, a bit iffy.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | November 30, 2009 4:03 AM

I know it's cheap, but as Penn Gilette correctly pointed out, in 1975, we were told a new Ice-age was coming. Heck, there were plans to somehow darken the Ice on the poles to heat up the earth.

Also, the environmentalists have a serious case of "cry wolf", preaching gloom and doom since the get-go. If their "predictions" had come true, the whales would all be extinct, all forests turned into paper and we'd all be dead anyhow because the ozone layer would be gone.

facts; you sorely need them. and while you're at it, see if you can get a clue or two as well.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | November 30, 2009 4:08 AM

So you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical that the 0.038% of the atmosphere made up by CO2, of which man only contributes a tiny 5%, is truly the major factor it's made out to be.

Posted by: ZK | November 30, 2009 4:35 AM

I haven't seen the evidence. I work in the environmental sector and I've not seen the evidence that demonstrates climate change is wholly or in part man made.

That doesn't make me a climate change denier. But it does make a mockery of people who would say "look at the evidence" or "I've seen the evidence", because in the vast majority of cases they haven't seen the evidence, not a bit of it.

What most people have seen is changing climate conditions, fair enough, that's a bit of a no brainer. However, since most of us aren't climate scientists we're unlikely to have seen the cause and effect evidence linking human activity with climate change.

The best most of us can do is say that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists claim that they have seen the linking evidence, and to take them at their word, until and unless we find ourselves in a position to challenge them.

I'll get my coat...

ZK

Posted by: Mordred | November 30, 2009 5:28 AM

Well Jadehawk, if you're so sure about that, how about you head over to Wikipedia and change the article on Carbon Dioxide, because that's where I got the number from. "CO2 is a trace gas being only 0.038% of the atmosphere." is the EXACT quote.

Further: "Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere by a variety of natural sources, and over 95% of total CO2 emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth."

Again, straight from the Wiki.

So human activity accounts for 5% of Carbon Dioxide emissions, not necessarily concentration in the atmosphere, maybe I should have been more precise. Still, the numbers are tiny to such an extent that my saving a few litres of petrol by getting a new car is going to do diddly-squat.

As for the "Cry Wolf" argument of "Well, we DID something, that's why the world didn't end", it's simply a fallacy. "And yeah, I say unto thee, thou must all pray for two days straight and send me $50 for me to pray too, or the world will end next week." Then, when the world, predictably, is still around, I can say "See, it's because we prayed".

In the 80s, there was an eco movement in Germany calling for a 100km/h speed limit to "save the trees". They said that otherwise, the forests would all die. Fortunately, the german government didn't fall for that and didn't institute speed limits. Guess what? The forests are still there.

Posted by: John Morales | November 30, 2009 5:43 AM

Mordred:

Well Jadehawk, if you're so sure about that, how about you head over to Wikipedia and change the article on Carbon Dioxide, because that's where I got the number from. "CO2 is a trace gas being only 0.038% of the atmosphere." is the EXACT quote.

Nice to see you find Wikipedia authoritative...

From that very article you could go to Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere and from there to Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. Did you?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | November 30, 2009 5:48 AM

while you're on wikipedia though, do look up Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Posted by: Mordred | November 30, 2009 5:52 AM

Strawman... probably. But it's circular. In cases where we did what the doomsayers suggest, they claim it as a victory, if we don't they'll say that it isn't applicable to the problem at hand.

The "ice age" kind of stands for a number of outrageous claims that "scientists" have made over the years, some of which were comical (the CERN Hadron collider will create a black hole), others less so.

It's not the basic science I'm attacking, btw, it's the drama surrounding it. EVEN IF the current models are absolutely correct and no change is made, the ensuing temperature changes will not bring about the apocalypse. Unless you live on a small island. Then it sucks.

Posted by: Tristan Croll | November 30, 2009 5:58 AM

Mordred, I'd like to propose a little exercise for you.

You know how carbon dioxide makes up 0.038% of the Earth's atmosphere? Well, measure out a square one metre on a side, step inside it and look up. What mass of carbon dioxide is there between you and space, in the column bounded by that metre square?

Posted by: Lilith | November 30, 2009 6:00 AM

Kel @15 said:

I was hoping Tony Abbott would step up and take on the leadership

From the news tonight, you may just get your wish in the Libs leadership spill tomorrow. It's a three-way runnoff between Turnbull (who still refuses to quit), Hockey, and Abbott.

Frankly I can't see either Hockey nor Turnbull winning the next election, but I can see Abbott maybe doing it, if enough voters are annoyed with Labor. That's scary, given that Abbott is such a rabid Catholic and lets religion control all his views

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | November 30, 2009 6:11 AM

Jadehawk, you unbelievable prick, did it occur to you that not everybody's mother tongue is english?

and the mathematical concept you're very evidently unfamiliar is the one where concentration itself is meaningless; concentration is only meaningful in relation to the strength of a substance's effect.

You're scientifically illiterate on a very basic level, but you keep on talking as if you know WTF you're talking about. seriously go look up Dunning-Kruger and stop getting all puffed up on your ignorance.

Posted by: Chester Burton Brown | November 30, 2009 6:24 AM

Classic: show a denialist how unsupported their echo-chamber derived yelling points are, and they respond by dropping the point like a hot potato.

No refutation, no nuanced debate, no explanation -- they just turn tail and pretend they never said it.

Where do ignorami get their arguing template? Because it seems very familiar, regardless of the issue at hand.

Yours,
CBB

Posted by: Teddydeedodu | November 30, 2009 6:33 AM

Rorschach
"I will watch with joy as the liberals self-destruct tomorrow."

Yes, tis a pity about whats happening to the Libs. They deserve it for keeping those Howardistas still in a position of power. The right wing of the party still hasnt woken up to the fact that they got obliterated in the last election. One would think that some people ought to know when they've been defeated.

Posted by: rwtwm | November 30, 2009 6:46 AM

I'll be upfront and say that I haven't read all of the comments yet because I should be working...

My 2 pence (cents if you prefer) on AGW.

CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, it's presence in the air effectively lowers the albedo of the planet making it warmer. This much is a simple physics experiment.

Where I disagree with the IPCC reports, is the amount of warming this can and may lead to. The problem is that all of the figures that we are reported are based on postulated feedbacks that we cannot yet experimentally measure.

The earth shall certainly warm in the short term as a result of increased GHG, but we don't know what effects this might lead to further down the line. The ideas that climate models work on, are truly best guesses on the part of climate scientists, as we have not witnessed the planet being 2C warmer than it currently is, we have know way of knowing what might happen to counter or worsen the balance.

Posted by: hyperdeath | November 30, 2009 7:20 AM

"Mordred" employs the classic Dunning-Kruger technique of flicking through a source, and presenting isolated and irrelevant factoids that superficially support his case.

The "95% of CO2 emissions being natural" claim is true but irrelevant. The vast majority of these emissions are due to biomass decay, which is naturally offset by biomass growth. The burning of fossil fuels, on the other hand, releases new carbon into the atmosphere, with no offset mechanism. The important figure is not the absolute rate at which CO2 is released, but the difference between the release and absorption rates.

It is difficult to imagine the sort of mental inadequacy that would lead someone to think that "the atmosphere is only 0.038% CO2" constitutes a counterargument. I could understand if someone took CO2's absorption spectrum, integrated it over the molecule's extent in the atmosphere to find the total absorption, and then made an argument based on figures that were actually relevant. However, the chain of logic in the "minds" of people like Mordred seem to be: "Duhhhh... small number... Duhhhh... CO2 not important... Duhhhh...".

So Mordred, do you have any other wonderful arguments you would like to present? How about claiming the warming trend reversed in 1998? How about referring to some form of solar cycle that you don't understand in the slightest?

Or how about actually learning something?

Posted by: The Science Pundit | November 30, 2009 8:28 AM

6396 counted in so far

8551 counted out so far

Posted by: felixthecat | November 30, 2009 8:59 AM

The only reason I can think of to vote "count me in", is to be popular with the "global warming is REAL!!!" crowd. Since there is no other reason to jump onto that bandwagon, "count me out". The evidence for human-induced global warming takes a whole lot of faith, mixed with a strong measure of hubris.

If it is indeed a human-caused phenomenon, neither the Copenhagen proposal nor any other such proposal will be useful, unless controlling population growth is addressed as the top priority. The world is over-populated by about 5 billion currently.

Posted by: Jynx | November 30, 2009 9:33 AM

This thread is a typical example of why I (usually) prefer to keep myself absent from the AGW/non-AGW debate. While some of the science is debated, the vast majority of the exchanges I have been witness to involve personal attacks, generalizations, and other forms of disrespect. The amount of intolerance I have seen (from both sides) is unbecoming for any group claiming to devote themselves to the discovery of truth.

I urge everyone to consider a bit more carefully that noone is infallible and we should all hold each other responsible for being fair, honest and civil.

With that said, I have not heard anyone point out what is potentially the greatest threat of the emails which have become known as "Climategate", namely that they threaten to cast doubt on the intellectual honesty of all scientists. Their very existence, regardless of the truth of their content, possesses the power of placing the whole of the scientific endeavor in question.

John Q. Public has already been told, by a variety of sources over the years that scientists are elitist, insular and maybe even conspiratorial. Creationists claim we are forced to take the findings of scientists on "faith". These emails are dangerous because they could be construed by the general public as giving credence to such a specious claim.

THAT is what worries me.

Posted by: Dianne | November 30, 2009 9:56 AM

Either I'm doing something wrong or this is an ex-poll. I can't get it to count my vote.

Posted by: jbeck.myopenid.com | November 30, 2009 9:59 AM

It is very interesting to see every crank and quack crawling out of the woodwork and whipping their wankers into a frenzy. The resident crank of the IDiot Institute Egnor has been churning out an endless series, one-time-Naderite-now-Vatican-stooge Wesley Smith is strutting about in self-righteousness. One time Nixon stooge, Bruce Chapman is muttering dark tidings and aches for a CRU style Out for his minions at the Dishonesty I. Common to all this is a lack of any analysis of the data. With multiple sets of data available, and 100s of lines of evidence around, the only thing the denialists can chomp is some obscure email? These denialists are worse than even creationists.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | November 30, 2009 10:10 AM

Jynx @ #90

OK... then for you this should really be an easy question. No personal attacks, or "bad manners" needed. And I'd like you to go ahead and answer it, please...

Which side does the vastly largest proportion of peer-reviewed, repeated, and independently confirmed science come down on regarding AGW?

And, would this data change in any significant way given the content of selectively stolen emails?

And lastly, would the data be wrong even if every person publishing it turned out to be he rudest, meanest prick in the lab? Argument from "politeness", fortunately for most of us, has no bearing on the merits of existing data.

What say you?

Posted by: Steven | November 30, 2009 10:27 AM

I am no specialist in weather much less global warming, but I find it more than a little disturbing that scientists at the University of East Anglia have now said they have thrown away much of their original climate change data. It makes it impossible for other scientists to check their calculations. This comes about after a freedom of information act request and the leaked e-mails. I find it hard to defend man-made global warming against the Bill O'Reilly crowd with whats begining to look like at best sloppy science.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 30, 2009 10:46 AM

with whats begining to look like at best sloppy science

…at one little university, out of hundreds in the world?

Come on.

Go here and here.

Posted by: jojame | November 30, 2009 10:54 AM

I don't understand why many of you are so harsh on global warming skeptics. Do you all really hold AGW to be a proven fact? Do you now have the equivalent of a crystal ball and know for sure that doom lies ahead? We're all aware of how greenhouse gases work. You don't need to bring it up each time to prove your point. The earth is a chaotic system and bite-sized pieces of science won't cut it.
The matter at stake here is what we do with the evidence and knowledge we've gathered on the subject. Do we take the leap of faith and cut back on emmisions in the belief that it will curb the global warming we think may exist? What evidence is there that this will help significantly? Studies I've read on current proposed legislation will be harmful economically and the amount of emissions reduced will be negligible.
The matter is heavily politicized. This has been brought to light by climategate. This isn't some mere isolated incident. The people involved have real power in the IPCC. Whether global warming is real or not is so unclear that the scientists had to resort to fudging their data in order to fit their agenda. Forgive me for being a skeptic.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 30, 2009 11:00 AM

Studies I've read on current proposed legislation will be harmful economically and the amount of emissions reduced will be negligible.

There you sum up the reason why we have AGW denial. There are some, like you, who do not give a toss what happens to the planet as long as you are not inconvenienced in anyway.

Well fuck you and your selfish attitude.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | November 30, 2009 11:05 AM

I don't understand why many of you are so harsh on global warming skeptics. Do you all really hold AGW to be a proven fact?

The matter at stake here is what we do with the evidence and knowledge we've gathered on the subject.

The matter is heavily politicized. This has been brought to light by climategate. This isn't some mere isolated incident. The people involved have real power in the IPCC. Whether global warming is real or not is so unclear that the scientists had to resort to fudging their data in order to fit their agenda. Forgive me for being a skeptic.

Posted by: David Estlund | November 30, 2009 11:10 AM

Broken poll. Runtime error'd when I submitted the info.

Posted by: David Estlund | November 30, 2009 11:13 AM

Aaaand it's fixed. I tried a few times, and finally succeeded.

Posted by: Richard Eis | November 30, 2009 11:30 AM

Do we take the leap of faith and cut back on emmisions in the belief that it will curb the global warming we think may exist?

Shouldn't we be cutting back on emmissions anyway?

Do you think the coal and oil will last forever?
Do you really think our population size and consumption is "not" having any effect?

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | November 30, 2009 11:41 AM

#111

I see a list put together by a blogger, of mostly reviews and responses to peer-reviewed papers... in the comment section he tries to make the argument that "journals don't allow responses like these unless they go through a review process themselves"

Weak. Just weak.

I'm sure that before pointing me to that site, you took at least a long hard look at the documents referenced and the comments in that post alone, knowing that I would probably do so myself... right? Right?

And within the "450" responses, they mostly contain questions regarding the methodology, or opinions on the interpretation of short-term implications, which we can certainly debate... but I see nothing in any of them which fundamentally disproves AGW. Which was the challenge I posed. That list looks an awful lot like the many, many lists of "scientific papers" against evolution.

Now... I took the trouble to review that weak list and parse it for what it was, would you care to point out which of those articles clearly disproves AGW? I'd be happy to review it (although it's likely I've already done so).

Posted by: AJ Milne | November 30, 2009 11:43 AM

#111, 'bitbutter', that's not me you're answering.

However, yes, I've heard of it, on and off...

... and I might mention it seems to me a grab bag of papers with various quibbles, some of which hardly rise to the level of questioning the essential recommendations of the IPCC, and at least a few of which are the work of folk whose work managed to insult so many of the cited works' authors that half the editorial board of the journal publishing them resigned does need a bit more of an introduction than 'Are you already aware of this list'...

... I mean, unless, again, the intention in introducing it with no substantial comment is again simply to imply the science is less sound than it generally is... In which case, I guess, that's the perfect way to commit to nothing whatsoever you'd have to defend later, while nonetheless attempting to achieve that very end.

(/... I mean, 'just asking questions', right?)

Posted by: hyperdeath | November 30, 2009 11:52 AM

jojame:

I don't understand why many of you are so harsh on global warming skeptics. Do you all really hold AGW to be a proven fact?

No one believes global warming to be a "proven fact". We do know, however, that it is supported by a vast amount of mutually corroborating data from many different fields and many different groups.

Do you now have the equivalent of a crystal ball and know for sure that doom lies ahead? We're all aware of how greenhouse gases work. You don't need to bring it up each time to prove your point.

Yes we do, for the simple reason that about 90% of all "skeptic" articles demonstrate utter pig-ignorance on the part of the author. Few of them engage with the claims of climatologists at all. Instead they focus upon irrelevant factoids (e.g. the atmosphere only being 0.038% CO2), plain untruths (e.g. volcanoes releasing more CO2 than fossil fuel burning), ludicrous misunderstandings (e.g. conflation of weather and climate), and the blindingly obvious being presented as some blockbusting revelation (e.g. natural climate change having occurred in the past).

The earth is a chaotic system and bite-sized pieces of science won't cut it.

err... yes... we know that.

The matter at stake here is what we do with the evidence and knowledge we've gathered on the subject.

Wow! We hadn't thought of that.

Do we take the leap of faith and cut back on emmisions in the belief that it will curb the global warming we think may exist? What evidence is there that this will help significantly? Studies I've read on current proposed legislation will be harmful economically and the amount of emissions reduced will be negligible. The matter is heavily politicized. This has been brought to light by climategate. This isn't some mere isolated incident. The people involved have real power in the IPCC. Whether global warming is real or not is so unclear that the scientists had to resort to fudging their data in order to fit their agenda.

Yes, the problem is difficult. Yes, the proposed solutions are costly and inadequate. Yes, the matter is politicized. However, this has no bearing whatsoever on the science. Similarly, some vaguely incriminating evidence for wrongdoing by one group at one university is of little relevance.

Forgive me for being a skeptic.

I have nothing against skepticism. It's the arrogant, ignorant, Fox-News-tells-me-all-I-need-to-know, Dunning-Kruger pseudoskepticism that I despise.

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | November 30, 2009 12:07 PM

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's presence in the air effectively lowers the albedo of the planet making it warmer. This much is a simple physics experiment.

Epic fail. Why don't you take a simple physics course at your local community college, or better yet, read : Weart

I guess you're just too lazy to look up 'albedo'.

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | November 30, 2009 12:12 PM

I don't understand why many of you are so harsh on global warming skeptics.

We're just harsh ON YOU, because you're an OBVIOUS CRETIN. If you had anything at all to offer science here someone might debate it, but since you don't, and continue to persist posting UTTER TRIPE, it's so much easier to call you what you are : ignorant and uneducated.

Posted by: Peter G. | November 30, 2009 12:43 PM

@122 Be honest. Your own comment is what passes for debate on this site about half the time. The debate is won by heaping the most epithets on the person you disagree with. Not terribly scientific but it is quite cathartic is it not? I know I enjoy a bit of Blogging Tourette's from time to time.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | November 30, 2009 12:52 PM

Don't like abuse? Perhaps you'd care to look at my little quizzes in 113 or 121. Still waiting for a denialist to treat evidence as if it were something other than high-level radioactive waste.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | November 30, 2009 12:58 PM

The debate is won by heaping the most epithets on the person you disagree with.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | November 30, 2009 1:03 PM

David Estlund...

You're on the right track... the link you provided in your own question is the same as the link provided in Nick's response... ;>

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 1:07 PM

Boy, between the royalty checks I get for shilling for Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Evilutionist Conspiracy, and Big Climate, it's a wonder I can keep all of these Swiss and Cayman bank accounts straight. Good thing I didn't have a part in wiring/painting the World Trade Centre with thermite ("Not just an explosive anymore; now it's a magic wonder material that can do anything a Truther needs it to do!")--I've already run out of supermodels to spend my blood money on.

Oh, a note to all the scientists: next Tuesday evening we'll of course be holding "Promoting the Galileonist LIE" strategy meetings at all the Masonic Lodges. It's 13 Chuwen 9 Mac by the long count, so our Illuminati brethren are responsible for bringing the cold cuts, while it's the Reptilians' turn to bring the trifle. If this includes any of you, please remember to keep it kosher for the Elders. As for those of you not on snack duty, please bring a list of all the local astronomers within a 3 kilometre radius (I still can't believe all the sheeple who fell for the 'benefits' of the metric system) so we can be sure to effect 100% coverup coverage. Remember, NASA and all of its industrial-military complex contractors are counting on you to promote the 'truth' of heliocentrism.

This year's topic is the Burj Dubai, scheduled to open in January. At 818 m, it's only a few storeys short of the firmament, and thus a potential leak in both senses of the word: a tall skeptic with a good jump atop the tower is a substantial disclosure risk, and owing to some uncertainty in our understanding of celestial dynamics we can't be entirely sure that the pointy antenna at the top won't puncture the firmament and trigger the vapour canopy to come flooding down. We've got the greys working on the problem, but in the meantime we need to consider proactive measures. Pons and Fleischmann assure us one of their thermite-painted cold fusion bombs could take the building out. Of course, we'll need to give the seismologists notice, so they can provide plausibility with one of their--what do they call those things? The things we blame whenever we execute a tactical strike?--oh, yeah, 'earthquakes'.

Oh, and for those of you in the south of France: Elvis and The Brain of Hitler are still on their "Piri Reis Was My Co-Pilot, But We Crashed Into a Transantarctic Mountain And I Had To Eat Him" tour and will be performing at Lourdes with a secret special guest. (I can't tell you who it is, but let's just say this is one chaste lady whose pants Elvis won't be swivelling his way into). Signed copies of the legendary show they performed at the Zeus' Thunderdome in Atlantis will be available for those of you who didn't get a chance to pick one up at the Flat Earth Society's "Turtlefest 2009" back in May.

Posted by: Knockgoats | November 30, 2009 1:22 PM

silkworm, i'm a lefy atheist variety denialist - ad

So, you're proof that lefty atheists can also be fuckwits. Who knew?

Note: I'm a lefty atheist, as any regular here will attest.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 1:57 PM

Lots more, but keep in mind that the science of climate change is really very simple:

At equilibrium Energy_IN=Energy_OUT. Energy_IN comes from the Sun. Energy_Out is in the form of blackbody infrared radiation--that is the radiation any body at a particular temperature would radiation.

Solar Energy is visible, and the atmosphere is largely transparent to it. Energy_OUT is in the infrared (heat), and greenhouse gasses take a big chunk out of it. Since Energy_Out is now greater than Energy_In, the globe has to warm.

That's what is going on in a nutshell

Just to add to a_ray_in_dilbert_space's comment, of particular interest in climate science are feedback mechanisms. Positive feedback mechanisms tend to amplify the effect of a forcing. For instance, because white snow reflects incoming radiation better than bare ground (ie, has a higher albedo), a warm winter without much snow cover accelerates warming as the bare ground will absorb more incoming energy than highly reflective snow would. Conversely, a series of cold and snowy winters (or a few years without summers) will have an overall cooling effect, again due to snow and ice's relatively high albedo.

Negative feedback mechanisms reduce the effect of some forcing, and so tend to have the effect of promoting climate stability. For instance, leaving aside their greenhouse effects, clouds reflect incoming solar radiation, leading to cooling. However, cooler temperatures would lead to cooler oceans, reducing the cloud cover produced by evaporation which then would increase the amount of solar radiation admitted to the ocean/ground, thus heating it and increasing the cloud cover produced by evaporation.

Posted by: Peter G. | November 30, 2009 2:22 PM

Then you would need to be checked for Alzheimer's Brownian. I quite enjoy the give and take of a good turd throwing contest and have participated in many. I just don't pretend it is a debate. There are many intelligent and well-informed posters here and also quite a lot of "my pocket protector is bigger than your pocket protector" junior high school science club debaters. It takes all kinds. Still, one can't ignore the fact that the posters who call most frequently for a "scientific" debate are generally the ones who offer the most personal insults to anyone who disagrees with them. If I were to offer any criticism it would be that the insults are just so mundane. Why not be creative? Why use cretin or dolt or fool? The English language is so rich. Why not turd-hurling proto-simian? Or suppurating hemorrhoid? Or sanctimonious sycophant. Those are all just for you. See I told you I enjoy it too. My pillow, by the way, is stuffed with irony.

Posted by: John M | November 30, 2009 2:31 PM

Currently the numbers are running 2,000 behind for the science. Perhaps not too surprising given the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail offerings on the subject. Such ultraconservative rags are read by just the kind of people who would both believe what the paper says, and at the same time would bother to sign in to vote in this poll.

Posted by: jojame | November 30, 2009 3:01 PM

Let me clarify what I wrote. When I wrote that earth is a chaotic system I was referring to the feedback systems that Brownian mentioned in post 136. The significance of climategate is that the scientists had to manipulate data in order to make their assertions as clear as day. The science couldn't stand up on it's own. I know nothing can be truly proven but the future is murky enough that I'm unwilling to bet destructive legislation on it.

There are peer reviewed journals refuting some of the claims made for global warming. They are linked in a post above. Some mention the solar cycles corresponding to climate changes or CO2 trailing behind warming as opposed to the other way around. I have read the evidence, for and against, over the years and again I'm unsure enough to plow through weak hurtful legislation.

I do understand how greenhouse gases work, it's not rocket science, but the question is how much of an impact do they have on our environment.

Posted by: eddie | November 30, 2009 3:09 PM

Actually, all of the denialists here should read;

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

My problem is that, although I recognise the science behind AGW is sound, and it will lead to some catastrophic damage if no action is taken, I am very skeptical that monetarist bullshit like cap and trade are any approximation of a solution. In fact, I think that scheme in particular is a deliberate scam on a par with enron and madoff.
Also, I like my car and computer. What I want is technical and scientific progress so we (all of us on earth, not just the first world) can have the benefits of science/technology in a sustainable way.

Posted by: Bruce the Canuck | November 30, 2009 3:17 PM

#144: although I recognise the science behind AGW is sound, and it will lead to some catastrophic damage if no action is taken, I am very skeptical that monetarist bullshit like cap and trade...

I'm with you. Unfortunately the one point the deniers/skeptics have right is that the corrupt financial sector that got us into the current economic mess have slithered their way into the issue of controlling emmissions.

It's hard to tell what to do about it. Corruption of international agreements, corporate governance, and the financial sector is arguable a more complex and intractable issue than AGW.

If you worked out the "drake equation" for the odds of coming out of the 21st century with our science-founded civilization intact and still moving forward, such odds would probably not be high.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 3:31 PM

Thanks, Pete. 'Sycophant' is my favourite, as its use absolves the writer of the responsibility of engaging arguments as much as whining about tone does, and is thus a favourite slur in contentless comments by conspiracy theorists and creationists. It's unfortunate that it's also accurate in some instances but is so overused by the aforementioned conspiracy theorists and creationists as to be nearly meaningless, which is why I'm unsure as to why you included it in a list of 'creative' insults. You might as well have included 'douchebag' among your list of creative insults, though I suppose such base vulgarity would have lowered the high ground you believe you occupy.

Still, all is not lost; besides being an example of unearned pretentiousness, your comment may still be used as a warning against reaching for the thesaurus as a first resort without then falling back on some good ol' fashioned basic background research. For, if you'd done your research you'd have realised that while such a polysyllabic may be new to you, those of us on the side of the evidence for evolution, for example, hear it all the time.

Apropos your comment, here is another common internet meme so you don't accidentally reinvent it in another attempt to be 'creative'.

Posted by: AJ Milne | November 30, 2009 3:44 PM

Liars For Gaia are trembling in fear, hiding behind the edifice of the latter-day Jericho. Rahab the hacker/trumpet-blower has given us the inside info...

(30) Lo, I saw seven seals, and one performing monkey, and Mickey Rooney's prophetic muse, perched on a big red ball. (31) And the seas did boil, and the ice cream did melt, and the cold cereal didst get soggy, and the ranting weirdos did get steadily more strangely poetic and entertainingly incoherent, employing increasingly colourful and strange metaphors beneath the harvest moon where once we danced my love! (32) Fly with me and foam and rave and wipe the spittle from thine rabid jaw, for this is the hour of our discontent, and the moment of our dissipated passion, and a really good time to refresh your deodorant lest people start looking at you funny, and if you think this last comment looks slightly like it was typed by a brain-damaged poodle on a mix of speed 'n shrooms, just wait 'til the next one. (33) For what precedes is hilariously empty vanity and rhetorical chestbeating and mouthbreathing weirdos between whose ears there is a near perfect experimental vacuum...

(/...And that's just the ones still functional enough to type...)

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | November 30, 2009 3:57 PM

This has been a fascinating (albeit disheartening) conversation, as online dustups over AGW typically are. It exemplifies something I often feel about life in the information age: Teh intertooobz® have had a marvelously beneficial effect in democratizing access to information, but the inevitable deleterious side effect is proliferation of yahoos who think possessing information, by itself, implies possession of knowledge or undersatnding.

I am honest enough with myself to realize that the mere fact that I can find technical papers doesn't mean I'm equipped to judge them. There's a reason it's called peer review and not any old bozo with a computer review... but it's abundantly clear to me that vast swaths of bozos with computers feel differently.

Since I know I don't, in most instances, have the tools to judge primary document for myself, what are my options? It seems to me that I can either trust that peer review is what it claims to be, and when there seems to be a broad consensus in the peer-reivewed literature, it probably honestly represents our best available scientific understanding of the subject in question... or I can believe that the peer review process is a front for a vast conspiracy to deliberately promote a knowingly false understanding for some presumably nefarious purpose.

Since the former choice is both the most parsimonious explanation and the least emotionally stressful (because no matter how bad the news is, it's more comfortable to believe folks are being honest with you than to believe they're lying to you about the bad news for even darker reasons), it's a mystery to me when folks adopt the latter view. I can only conclude that those who do so have their own (presumably equally nefarious) agenda.

It's also a mystery to me that anyone who's ever flown anywhere and looked out an airplane window, or who's ever even glanced at at a selection of satellite photos, doubts that humans impact the global ecosystem. To me, the idea that ~6.8 billion humans, along with their attendant industry and agriculture, might not impact the climate seems massively counterintuitive. Now, I know full well that plenty of things that are counterintuitive to the layperson turn out to be true, but in this case the layperson's (at least this layperson's) intuitive sense and the consensus of peer-reviewed science coincide... so even if AGW deniers were innocently skeptical of the science, why wouldn't they trust their own common sense of the matter?

Finally, while I can surely understand why people might innocently wish AGW wasn't true (after all, who wants to believe bad news?), it's less clear why — absent self-serving ulterior motives, of course — anyone would oppose behaving as though it is true: The things required to address AGW (e.g., energy conservation, alternative energy generation, changes in transportation infrastructure, etc.) would be beneficial in their own right, even if AGW didn't require them, and the imperative to make these changes presents nearly endless opportunities for new businesses and the development of new technologies. Opportunities, that is, for precisely the sort of agile, entrepreneurial efforts by individuals and small businesses that ideological conservatives (who seem to make up the majority of AGW deniers) claim to revere. So even without trusting the AGW science, why don't conservatives support anti-AGW policies, just because they're good for innovation and market competition? Couldn't be that they're lying, could it? That they're really not the libertarian market warriors they claim, but instead greedy, hidebound corporatist defenders of the status quo?

Surely not, right? That could never be!

Posted by: blastzilla | November 30, 2009 4:15 PM

Wow, them damn skeptics! How dare they not listen to the corrupt and fraudulent advice given in IPCC reports that show spikes in temperature in computer models that always return parabolic curves... oh no, another skeptic! How can they exist, they're so evil!

Where is the coverage on this blog about climategate? There is news about religion - I mean, who doesnt want that to go away, but the elephant in the room is Man Made Global Warming - apparently we're all going to die very soon so we can finally all verify if there is a diety or not!

I thought this was a science blog, not some media outlet for Professor Jones and Professor Mann? An unofficial news outlet of Gavin Schmitt from RealClimate...

I do not understand how the biggest scientific fraud in our generation is unheard of here except for some of the readers!

Give the Register's news review a read and then form an opinion: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/crugate_analysis/

Or if you cant read tech journals, heres one from the Telegraph in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html

Better yet, visit the skeptics websites and read audits and reviews of the climategate emails and how corrupt the scientific community that feeds data into the climate community and the IPCC have been!

The opposite to a skeptic is to be gullible, and not informing yourself with what the skeptics have known for decades and centuries - man made global warming is what you get when you graph 150 years of flat temperature into a dramatic graph sprouting doom and gloom.

Posted by: Kel, OM | November 30, 2009 4:21 PM

The opposite to a skeptic is to be gullible

Thought not.

Posted by: AJ Milne | November 30, 2009 4:38 PM

Heh.

Ah yes. 'ZOMG! The biggest scientific fraud in our generation!'. Yet again.

(Heads off to make a new 'Climate science crank bingo' card...)

(/As for me, I prefer my climate science scandals non-fictional...)

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 4:49 PM

I do not understand how the biggest scientific fraud in our generation is unheard of here except for some of the readers!

That's evolution, dipshit. If you wanna go about calling things the "biggest scientific fraud" on this blog you'll have to take a number. See my comment #132 for at least half a dozen "greatest" scientific hoaxes that predate AGW.

*Grumble, grumble* Goddamn konspiracy kids these days got no goddamn sense of history; always think they're the first to stomp their little feet and proclaim themselves the first and only ones to see past the sheeple. I mean, I like Bedtime for Democracy as much as the next guy but I recognise Jello takes a few creative licenses with songs like "D.M.S.O." for cryin' out loud...

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | November 30, 2009 5:01 PM

<sigh>

Thomas, Thomas, Thomas... #159 is a prime example of why I think you're a crank. It's not that I disagree with you — to the extent I can figure out what you're trying to say, I think it's highly likely that we agree vastly more often than not — but I often can't figure out what you're trying to say, and that's not just some cognitive dysfunction on my part: Usually nobody can sort out what you're on about.

And then, you attack people for things they didn't say. For example, nothing I've said in this thread, nor in the totality of my comments on Pharyngula, nor in the other fora where we've interacted, can reasonably be construed as meaning I reject "modern numerical and computational methods," nor that I disdain mathematical modeling, as you suggest. In fact, I do not... and I agree with you about AGW, and said as much in the very comment you're attacking.

In that same comment, I made the point that anger and profanity are often defensible, and even constructive, in these debates... but you're always angry, whether it's warranted by the conversational context or not, and often angry to the point of incoherence. It discredits the very ideas you're trying to promote, as witness PeterG's initial response, and embarrasses people whose natural inclination might otherwise be to be your allies.

Oh, and thanks for the advice: I'll try to take a class in something... or maybe teach one.

Posted by: Mal Adapted | November 30, 2009 5:18 PM

#125 Dave Estlund,

My favorite source for categorizing denier talking points, and refuting them individually, is SkepticalScience.

Posted by: Kel, OM | November 30, 2009 6:11 PM

You're quoting Andrew Bolt as a reliable source for the truth of climate change? Wow, just wow.

Posted by: Peter G. | November 30, 2009 6:23 PM

Bill@ 157 If you're not oblivious to the irony of your last line then presumably you'll admit that that line, lecturing me, would make you a meta troll. Not that I was lecturing mind you. More joining in the spirit of the thread. I wouldn't use profanity at most of the places I blog as a courtesy to the host but I agree that at this site it's how one emphasizes one's rightness.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 6:32 PM

I wouldn't use profanity at most of the places I blog as a courtesy to the host but I agree that at this site it's how one emphasizes one's rightness.

No, it's much more courteous to put words in your opponent's mouth and then sardonically 'agree' with those words in order to emphasise your rightness.

When's the netiquette book coming out, Peter?

Posted by: Knockgoats | November 30, 2009 7:06 PM

Cried one, IPCC co-author Kevin Trenberth, in an email to other members of this conspiracy: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t.” - wiley the cowardly little shit

You can see this in context at http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1051&filename=1255496484.txt. Looks very different. Here's the abstract for the paper Trenbarth is referring to in the email:

"Planned adaptation to climate change requires information about what is happening and why. While a long-term trend is for global warming, short-term periods of cooling can occur and have physical causes associated with natural variability. However, such natural variability means that energy is rearranged or changed within the climate system, and should be traceable. An assessment is given of our ability to track changes in reservoirs and flows of energy within the climate system. Arguments are given that developing the ability to do this is important, as it affects interpretations of global and especially regional climate change, and prospects for the future."

What he says in the paper is, basically, we know why there has been no obvious rise in sea-surface temperatures in the last decade (there hasn't been a fall either) - it's because we've had a long El Nina phase of the ENSO system (this has now ended, a new El Nino phase has started and what a surprise, sea surface temperatures are sharply up this year on last). We know from past experience that the heat has not vanished into space; what is not known is how much of it goes where (e.g. into melting ice, deeper into the ocean, etc.) and that is the "scandal" he's talking about. Read the fucking paper, wiley the cowardly little shit. But of course, anyone ignorant enough to take Heinz Hug's crap seriously (even other denialists don't do that) is not going to be able to understand it.

The two papers referred to did appear in the IPCC report - not a very efficient conspiracy, eh, wiley the cowardly little shit?

I suspect the rest of these "damning emails" are similarly not-very-damning when seen in context. Yes, they are rude about denialists and may even have done a few things they shouldn't - but's what's amazing is how little the thieves have got, if the emails being hawked around are the best they can do. Where are the orders from the UN and Al Gore to prepare the world communist takeover? Where are the huge payments from Greenpeace? The admissions that yes, Heinz Hug is right? Pfft.

Climate scientists are under constant harassment, intended simply to obstruct the progress of their work, because the denialists are not interested in the truth, but in delaying action to combat anthropogenic climate change. It's understandable, if regretable, that they cut a few corners in trying to evade that harassment.

Posted by: Kagato | November 30, 2009 7:22 PM

#48:

Why are The Greens opposing the ETS legislation?

For the opposite reason to the Liberals.
The coalition thinks imposing an ETS is an undue burden on industry & economy, pretty much regardless of the environmental effect; whereas the Greens think the (currently proposed) ETS is weak sauce that will have insufficient environmental effect and gives too many concessions to the polluters.

The Greens want the ETS to go back for review because they want it to be made into stronger legislation.

#149:

Liars For Gaia are trembling in fear, hiding behind the edifice of the latter-day Jericho. Rahab the hacker/trumpet-blower has given us the inside info so that all we need do is speak truth to power (Bingo!) and shout it out loud till the walls come crashing down, and this ass of a religion-posing-as-science will be utterly destroyed. For the people have come out of the “Global Warming” wilderness to reclaim their God-given right to coal-powered electricity plants, cars, incandescent lamps, air travel etc.
Pure science is simply knowledge based on observed phenomena, and applied science is like a faithful servant. Junk science (AGW/CC) is like Pharaoh, who seeks to enslave us. (Bingo again!)

Wait, can you get bingo twice on one card?

Aw, man.

Posted by: Guardian of the Poll | November 30, 2009 7:44 PM

They aren't very moral. But they are very concerned over the Climategate (hacked emails)scandal are very much excited over someone like Al Gore a nd other enviro-liars going to prison for extortion over the whole scandal.

I would rather be a "troll" than a liar and fornicator. I guess you people not only fornicate polls, but you fornicated the data on climate research as well.

I realize the ice is melting on the poles, so what? It has done so in the past and will do so again in the future. it's a natural earth cycle that has more to do with nature and sunspots than human emissions / pollution. The thing is a scandal and is extortion and should be trated as such. I hope when this climate summit begins, it snow 14,000 feet deep and pins them all in and they can't get out. Let's see how their warming goes then. Crminals like this deserve to be buried under their own crap.

Until then, happy fornication.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | November 30, 2009 8:00 PM

*kilfiles the guy who says fornicator a lot.*

Hey I voted fwiw. Yay!

Posted by: Ol'Greg | November 30, 2009 8:15 PM

Hey I wonder if other people didn't notice you have to confirm from your email address at first. I'm really bad about not reading confirmation stuffs. So hey people who tend to be unobservant about such things, remember to go back to your email address and click the confirmation link!

Or... maybe it's just me.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 30, 2009 8:20 PM

I realize the ice is melting on the poles, so what? It has done so in the past and will do so again in the future. it's a natural earth cycle that has more to do with nature and sunspots than human emissions / pollution

Are we still playing bingo?

Pardon me for the Godwin, but this argument works for everything. Watch:

I realize that Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, and Gypsies died in the camps, so what? They've died in the past and will do so again in the future. it's a natural cycle that has more to do with life and death than Hitler/ the Nazis.

Posted by: Peter G. | November 30, 2009 8:53 PM

"I suspect the rest of these "damning emails" are similarly not-very-damning when seen in context."-Knockgoats@197 Far from being damning I was delighted to find that there is still strong, if somewhat concealed, criticism being exchanged about the quality of various papers within this scientific discipline. It's a shame they can't be more public about it but, as a branch of science, it will probably have more impact on public policy than any other so I suppose the caution is justified. Frankly these letters have considerably restored my confidence in the results being reported. There wasn't even a rubber band slingshot never mind a smoking gun.

Posted by: wiley | November 30, 2009 9:39 PM

@the abusive goatee-bearded climategate-denialist #172
You mean to say Climate Change is caused by natural cycles like El Nino/La Nina? I already knew that.
Dr Heinz Hug used an FTIR spectrophometer to determine the Rf for CO2. The IPCC have not made any attempt to determine the Rf value and the figure they use is out by a factor of 80. Until such time as they make a serious attempt to determine the value experimentally, I'll go with Hug's analysis.
It's regretableunforgivable , that they cut a few corners in trying to evade that harassment.

Posted by: wiley | November 30, 2009 9:43 PM

whoops!
It's regretable and unforgivable that the CRU Liars For Gaia LIED in order to hoodwink the public about CC.

Posted by: AJ Milne | November 30, 2009 9:59 PM

Oh... look... the denialists are still bleating on with their vapid noise 'bout yet another manufactuversy, hoping somehow maybe endless, monotonous repetition will make this limpdicked silliness stick...

I'd demand my prophet-guy* credentials here, 'cept that this was pretty much predicting bears would shit in the woods...

(*/Fun fact: a previous draft of this mentioned a certain 16th century quatrain-monger in this space... And naturally got held... And well, duh...)

Posted by: Commissar Claw | December 1, 2009 12:01 AM

1) I never thought I would live to see the day that a tea bagger was against fornication.

2) I'm fairly certain that taking a quote out of context and claiming it says something it doesn't is lying.

3) The level of troll craziness on this thread is approaching timecube level.

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | December 1, 2009 12:37 AM

Wrong, in simple point of fact, to identify Elifritz as representative of this community, and wrong, in my considered opinion, in your characterization of the usual debate here.

Anyone who thinks I am an active member of the PZ community simply hasn't been paying attention, Bill. I actively ream Phryangulites, atheists, kooks and nutty tea baggers alike, and I certainly am not an atheist. That being said, I am not a deist either. Unfortunately, PZ won't ban me.

I am a theoretical physicist, Bill. The whole god singularity business went out the window with GUTH's cosmic inflation, it was a mere fad among physicists. We're dealing with the validation of cosmic theories on the condensed matter physics scale now, and anything goes, including blob like super intelligent aliens with slimy tentacles, who are routinely using manufactured biobots to probe your anus on a nightly basis. You don't have a clue how the universe works on even a superficial scale, and you won't even ENTERTAIN the evidence, thus, you don't understand the satire in my rants.

Any bozo who switches to CF lightbulbs or buys a hybrid car is doing more to save the planet than you are, because you're actively harming the cause you purport to champion.

By not coddling, dare I say not ACCOMMODATING, a laissez faire and politically correct status quo 'normalist' like yourself? Surely you are jesting.

You people are almost, but not quite, as bad of a problem for humanity and the life that is almost desperately clinging to the surface of the Earth, than the so called tin foil hat anti-science tea bagging crowd that is actively attempting, and succeeding, in subverting the constitutional liberties and financial solvency of the United State government. You aren't the 'know nothing' just say no crowd, you are the DO NOTHING SAY NOTHING democrats and liberals in name only crowd.

Heckava job, Bill. It's all my fault. I should just STFU right? And everything will be all right.

The reason I am usually right and ahead of the curves by decades, Bill, is that I got a decent post Sputnik education in the early sixties, which put me well on my way to great critical thinking abilities well before the third grade, with the new math and simple machines taught right out of kindergarten. With an education like that, a university PhD, indeed a simple BS, is overkill.

The problems you face today were easily predicted when Ronald Reagan was voted into office in 1980. And in all that time you have done nothing and said very little. When this all blows up in your faces at least I can feel good about myself, in that I did everything I could, and I spoke up.

And that's the very least that I could do for you.

If you really care about winning the battle for the planet's future, you've got to start choosing who you shoot at more carefully.

I didn't shoot at anyone in the Vietnam war, and I'm not shooting at anyone now. They're fucking WORDS Bill. Your allegory betrays your violence.

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | December 1, 2009 1:25 AM

it'd be better if you could focus your mighty brain on cogent critiques of actual problems

The goal of my scientific activities is not to criticize problems, but to solve them. The goal of the 'do nothing' crowd (that would be you) is to criticize problems and the people who create them, while simultaneously avoiding doing any actual work solving those problems, and not acknowledging that your problems are indeed self inflicted. The goal of the tea baggers is to criticize solutions to scientific problems, and people who create those solutions - those would be the scientists.

If you had any critical thinking skills at all, you would instantly see the fallacy and idiocy of criticizing problems instead of confronting them. But if your goal is to avoid acknowledging and solving your own problems, then I can understand your desire to encourage their active criticism.

Thus I reserve my criticism to those people who create avoidable problems that subsequently have to be solved, usually by yours truly, especially when those problems could have been easily prevented (solved) by a minimum of concentrated effort, obviating any future costly and time consuming remediation efforts. Cases in point : LEO launch costs and flight rate, orbital debris, carbon dioxide contamination, the list is endless.

Accommodating you assholes doesn't work, trust me. PZ recognized that early on, that's why this is his blog, and that's why you are posting here.

I'll see you all next Memorial day, and we'll see where you are with the Military Media Industrial Complex, and the Afghanistan endless war, and the media and national glorification of violence is a wonderful thing 'thing', as well as his new NASA political and educational initiative, the debt is good and stupidity and pollution 'rules' problem 'thing', all problems that in your opinion should only be criticized in a politically correct manner and not confronted, addressed, and then 'solved'.

I am neither expecting nor predicting great things from any of you, with the exception of Mr. Myers.

Well, there is the occasional brilliance posted here, which is why I mostly lurk and rarely post. Good luck with your 100 gigaton carbon problem.

In the future there will be free diamonds for everybody. Even the homeless and starving people.

Posted by: wiley | December 1, 2009 4:33 AM

Wiley, the only proven liar here is you.

Posted by: bitbutter | December 1, 2009 5:29 AM

@Derrick Byford My thoughts exactly.

Far worse than the content of the emails are the utter confusion revealed comments in the source code relating to CRU TS 2.1

As I understand it, we don't currently know how the processed data from CRU (that's relied upon heavily by IPCC) was created. Until that information is made public, the hopeless mess that was TS 2.1 certainly doesn't inspire confidence that these datasets are valid--to put it mildly. I think that's pretty significant.

"OH **** THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found."

http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/data-horribilis-harryreadmetxt-file.html

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 6:14 AM

Derrick Byford says "Climate Research is a relatively new field based on incomplete data..."

The first research in climate by Charles Fourier predates the Origin of species by about 35 years. The basic theory of Earth's climate was worked out by the beginning of the 20th Century. The rest of your post is equally wrong.

Posted by: bitbutter | December 1, 2009 6:44 AM

#201

"There are 4 independent temperature time series, composed by very different methodologies"

Could you provide some more information about these parallel series (keywords) so i can find out more?

By CRU's own assessment they are the fourth most important source of data supporting AGW. The leak demonstrates a terrifying level of incompetence for an organisation with such an pivotal role.

Until now I'd trusted that the data suggesting AGW was valid. I can no longer trust that it is.

(@pharyngula in general: shrieks of 'denialist' aren't helpful to your cause)

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 7:58 AM

Bitbutter,
No, the leaked emails--about a thousand emails out of several 10s of thousands, and quite possibly edited by the hackers--demonstrate humans doing science in the face of a well orchestrated disinformation campaign against them.

And if you don't know about the global temperature data series (HADCRUT, GISSTEMP, UAH and RSS), then why should we assume you know anything about climate?

From this, I'd assume you aren't a denialist, just an ignoramus--and possibly one who revels in his ignorance like a pig in shit.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 8:07 AM

Wiley, sweetie, I want you to know that I haven't forgotten you. You're just too stupid and irrelevant to merit a real reply. Have a good day, Punkin'.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | December 1, 2009 8:20 AM

Part of the problem is that denialists always seem to assume that the concept of humans affecting the climate is completely outrageous and implausible; thus there is no limit to how much evidence they can demand before being convinced.

This is based on utter ignorance of physics and chemistry. It is not plausible that we can greatly increase the atmospheric concentration of a greenhouse gas and _not_ affect the climate. It's like claiming we can stick another zero on the roulette wheel, but the house won't win any more.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 8:45 AM

Wiley, You will notice that Heinz Hug excreted his turd of a publication in a place where it would blend in--Energy And Environment. This is a publication so discredited that decision to publish there is almost self-refuting.

Hug utterly ignored the effects of the thick tails of the CO2 absorption lines. That is why the effect of adding CO2 is logarithmic, but not zero.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 1, 2009 9:24 AM

However, modern climate research in the context of AGW depends on the use of climate modelling,

The political ramifications is a different story. That has nothing to do with the science. But people like you seem to conflate the two. In particular, you seem to not want to spend money solving a problem, so you attempt to discredit the science. Not very rational.

Posted by: Derrick Byford | December 1, 2009 9:52 AM

Nerd of Redhead, OM

Gosh! You seem rather confused. Are you saying that climate modelling is, or is not a crucial element in the investigation of climate change effects?

Maybe you can explain to me what "total information required" means - how is it possible to have total information?

I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that science was the rigorous investigation and testing of hypotheses or predictions that are presented based on good evidence and clearly stated in a testable form. I certainly make no claims of sufficient expertise to discredit any science - just enough to suggest that reasonable criticism should be permitted by those that do have the expertise!

The proposition that a particular catastrophe hypothesis should have trillions of dollars thrown at it by all developed nations, while other potentially equal, or greater problems exist is surely to "conflate science and politics" rather than the reverse?

I had thought my arguments were pretty mild and rational but they seem to bring on some very personal attacks!

Posted by: bitbutter | December 1, 2009 10:56 AM

@ AJ Milne

Thanks for the context. The hostility makes more sense with the backstory about astroturfing. It's unfortunate though, that this reaction will put-off people legitimately wanting to air their concerns and learn about the material.

Here's one of mine: A plain reading of the email correspondence, together with the claimed accidental deletion of source data by Phil Jones, looks very much like (illegal) destruction of incriminating data has taken place. Don't you find this at least worrying? (if not for what it means about AGW, then for what it does to the public credibilty of science in general)

"If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone."

Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | December 1, 2009 11:03 AM

It's unfortunate though, that this reaction will put-off people legitimately wanting to air their concerns and learn about the material.

If you genuinely want to learn something about science and in particular the planetary sciences, you would be out there learning and not posting your complete drivel here over and over again. You're so fucking laughably stupid and you just can't see it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 1, 2009 11:27 AM

Derrick, you are the confused one. I've been a working scientist for 30+ years, so any attempts to tell me how science works just goes to show how wrong you are. Your political screed at the bottom of your post #216 shows me what you are up to. You don't like the possible political considerations, so you must attack the science behind it. All without citing any science. Guess what? The only way to refute science is with more science. And that must be published in the peer reviewed literature. Attempting to demean science and scientist only shows your dogmatic political position. And your claim you were being personally attacked, when I never did so, shows you are probably reading or copypastaing a script. So, who is reasonable, and who isn't?

Posted by: Knockgoats | December 1, 2009 11:31 AM

bitbutter,
What is your evidence that any source data has been deleted, accidentally or otherwise? I'm not saying it hasn't, but I currently know of no evidence it has.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 11:50 AM

bitbutter,
OK, I apologize for the snark. I get a bit peeved at continually fending off accusations of fraud and/or incompetence directed at climate scientists, some of whom I know, and many of whom are top-notch people and good researchers. To explain:

The HarryReadme file is taken out of context. It is true that in many cases in scientific programming a program may be written in haste to meet a specific publication deadline. In such cases, it is not uncommon that documentation will be rudimentary and to an outsider (e.g. Harry trying to come up to speed on the code) the code will look chaotic.
Nonetheless, scientific programs are validated by a variety of different methods--including comparison with other previously validated code, multiple competing programs, whether the code reproduces known physics, etc. Again, remember Science 101--never rely on just one of anything.

Now, the reason code often gets short shrift is because 1)resources are always severely limited and 2)the code isn't of central importance, because it will generally not be widely distributed and often times will only be used a limited number of times.

Do not confuse "the model" with "the code" that implements the model. They are distinct, and it is the model that matters.

Finally, you have to understand that there is nothing different between climate science and any other branch of science. The processes that go on to get to our understanding may look chaotic, but the field has developed methods that ensure a reliable understanding with high confidence. Science works, and climate science is no exception.

Posted by: bitbutter | December 1, 2009 11:59 AM

@Knockgoats #224

Here's an article about CRU having dumped raw data, with the effect of preventing anyone from testing the legitimacy of how they processed it: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 1, 2009 12:05 PM

God-given right to coal-powered electricity plants

<headdesk>

Then why isn't the supply of coal infinite?

Or can we use it to calculate the date of the Second Coming, in marked contradiction to Mark 13:32–35?

I think you moron simply haven't thought things through.

I realize the ice is melting on the poles, so what? It has done so in the past and will do so again in the future. it's a natural earth cycle that has more to do with nature and sunspots than human emissions / pollution.

Read comment 97.

Didn't your mother teach you that it's naughty to comment on a blog thread without having read all of it first?

It is just possible that the trillions of dollars (and economic disruption) claimed necessary to confont Climate Change may be better spent on dealing with other addressable problems already killing tens of millions of humans every year.

Dude, the Iraq War alone has already cost over 3 trillion dollars. What money is available for is a question of political will, nothing else.

I'm referring to the source code for CRU TS 2.1, not the emails (though they're worrying too). As I said, the comments contained here demonstrate a terrifying level of incompetence for an organisation with such an pivotal role.

Scientists tend to write all the software they need themselves, because they usually lack the money to hire professionals. It goes without saying that very, very few scientists are professional programmers themselves.

In other words, climatology is under-, not overfunded.

The proposition that a particular catastrophe hypothesis should have trillions of dollars thrown at it by all developed nations, while other potentially equal, or greater problems exist

Congratulations! You just volunteered to evacuate Bangladesh.

I had thought my arguments were pretty mild and rational but they seem to bring on some very personal attacks!

See comments 99 and 217.

A plain reading of the email correspondence, together with the claimed accidental deletion of source data by Phil Jones, looks very much like (illegal) destruction of incriminating data has taken place. Don't you find this at least worrying? (if not for what it means about AGW, then for what it does to the public credibilty of science in general)

Taking this at face value – and I haven't read the e-mails –, it damages the credibility of a certain Phil Jones, not that of "science in general". Mr Jones isn't "science in general" any more than I am.

Why isn't that obvious?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 1, 2009 12:26 PM

In the public eye, this leak will (justifiably imo) work to weaken people's trust in scientists in general, in particular parts of the scientific process in particular (peer review).

Posted by: wiley | December 1, 2009 2:44 PM

Rabid fascist evangelical 'on fire for Gaia' Warmy preaches and screeches the Green Faith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIl2gdDtbCg&NR=1
BWAAAHAHA! If you Climate Believers still don't get how ridiculous you look to us planet-god atheists, look cross-eyed into a mirror and wiggle 2 fingers next to each temple, and croon in a low monotone: "Global Warming!"

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 1, 2009 2:58 PM

Rabid fascist evangelical 'on fire for Gaia' Warmy preaches and screeches the Green Faith:

Who cares?

Why should I be ashamed of what other people do, when I'm not responsible for it?

(Disclaimer: I haven't even bothered to watch the video. I'm taking your word about it on faith. This might be a mistake. But, for the reasons explained above, I don't bother finding out.)

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 3:26 PM

bitbutter,
The raw data are all on file with the meteorological organizations from which the data were received in the first place. 95% of the data even from CRU is already in the public domain. The rest is not public because the agreements with the supplying organization prohibit it.

Did it ever occur to you that those publishing the emails might have an agenda?

Posted by: AJ Milne | December 1, 2009 3:33 PM

... slight addendum to the above: you'll note this agrees with ARIDS's note at #328, and a slightly better link (just pointing to the top of the page) is here (the comment the other points to clipboards a wire story circulating, about Jones temporarily stepping down).

Posted by: Kel, OM | December 1, 2009 4:17 PM

So what exactly should the program shown if it were programmed correctly?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 1, 2009 4:26 PM

Bitbutter, to me it looks like you are trying to find a reason to be a denier, and maybe drag us with you. You aren't convincing us at all with your extreme skepticism. We old farts know better. Don't let your paranoia get the better of your rationality. The data is still good. The results of the models are still good. AGW is occuring and is scientifically demonstrated. To say otherwise is false.

Posted by: MonkeyDeathcar | December 1, 2009 4:40 PM

Sorry, misspelled, should have been "Begley"

Posted by: AJ Milne | December 1, 2009 4:59 PM

Well, having read some of the Harry_Read_Me.txt stuff myself, I find myself thinking, again, that from what I can see of the context, here, the conclusions drawn by those screaming there's some kind of huge problem revealed by this stuff look incredibly overstated, premature, and generally insanely irresponsible, if not deliberately misleading.

This is clearly a moving record of work by a programmer working with a large set of disparate data sources and bits of code. The fact that it would forthrightly discuss problems in the process of doing this are hardly surprising--that's what these are usually for. I write code on large projects, and my logs of this nature similarly contain obscenities, blasphemies, and generally rude comments on some of the shit I have to put up with and so on...

... All of which says *nothing fucking whatsoever* about the quality of the finished product. What is says is: someone was working hard on this stuff, and gave a fuck. Seeing people on the blogosphere pulling out bits and snippets and saying 'ZOMG! It was difficult! There were problems! The data required actual effort to work with!', again, without the context that would make that meaningful, and *especially* without really knowing whether the problems were resolved... Well, all I can really say is: 'Well, duh, dumbfucks.'

Or actually, no... That's not *all* I can really say. I can also frankly say: 'I call bullshit.'

(Oh, and a special shoutout to those claiming to be experienced programmers making those claims... Seems to me, if you really are, you should already know what bullshit it is to cherry pick like this.)

... Oh, and here's another entertaining observation for y'all: I just pulled up some of my own notes from a bit of code I was working on, and surprise surprise: sure, it was full of shit about how much this stuff sucks, how annoyed I am about it... How much the code (mostly other people's code, natch) sucks...

... And that's about stuff that's fixed, done, handled...

... And looking at it, I realize: I don't tend to put notes about how it was fixed in readmes of that nature--or certainly I don't tend to go on about it. I take notes like that when stuff is messed up to remember where I was in fixing it... Once things are going, comments on how it's working/how it's fixed are rather more likely to wind up more in the sources 'emselves, or the cvs or svn comments. There might be a brief 'resolved... see source x.cpp' in the working notes, that's about it...

... but then, I'm not expecting lying astroturf artists to swipe my shit and manufacture a bullshit controversy out of it, either.

So, again, context: these are clearly, informal, working notes, not meant to be a complete record. Without knowing what else exists in the documentation, what else is in the code, they mean less than nothing to me.

And so, gee, what a surprise the fuckers trying to imply the science is somehow shoddy would seize on such a thing, try to spread it to the four winds.

(So, shorter: this is just the blatant gotcha mentality of the assholes flogging this on clear display yet again. They don't give a rat's ass if the criticisms are valid. They'll just grab anything that sounds vaguely disturbing, yank it out, jump up and down excitedly, make noise about it. And *of course* a programmer's worklog is going to contain grist for that.)

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | December 1, 2009 9:03 PM

A debunking of the "They deleted data" lie.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No

Frankly, bitbuter, I see nothing that even hints at scientific misconduct--frustration, leading to suggestions of unwise action, yes, but there's not even any indication that the researchers deleted any emails in response.

And ultimately, it comes down to evidence. None of the emails raise any doubts about the main lines of evidence. CRU agrees with the other 3 temp. series. Ice is still melting. Anthropogenic CO2 is still rising...

My recommendation is to look at the evidence, not the personalities. The evidence is overwhelming.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 2, 2009 3:18 AM

Publish and be wrong
Oct 9th 2008

From The Economist print edition

One group of researchers thinks headline-grabbing scientific reports are the most likely to turn out to be wrong
Adrian Johnson

IN ECONOMIC theory the winner’s curse refers to the idea that someone who places the winning bid in an auction may have paid too much. Consider, for example, bids to develop an oil field. Most of the offers are likely to cluster around the true value of the resource, so the highest bidder probably paid too much.
The same thing may be happening in scientific publishing, according to a new analysis. With so many scientific papers chasing so few pages in the most prestigious journals, the winners could be the ones most likely to oversell themselves—to trumpet dramatic or important results that later turn out to be false. This would produce a distorted picture of scientific knowledge, with less dramatic (but more accurate) results either relegated to obscure journals or left unpublished.
In Public Library of Science (PloS) Medicine, an online journal, John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece, and his colleagues, suggest that a variety of economic conditions, such as oligopolies, artificial scarcities and the winner’s curse, may have analogies in scientific publishing.
Dr Ioannidis made a splash three years ago by arguing, quite convincingly, that most published scientific research is wrong. Now, along with Neal Young of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland and Omar Al-Ubaydli, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, he suggests why.
It starts with the nuts and bolts of scientific publishing. Hundreds of thousands of scientific researchers are hired, promoted and funded according not only to how much work they produce, but also to where it gets published. For many, the ultimate accolade is to appear in a journal like Nature or Science. Such publications boast that they are very selective, turning down the vast majority of papers that are submitted to them.

Picking winners

The assumption is that, as a result, such journals publish only the best scientific work. But Dr Ioannidis and his colleagues argue that the reputations of the journals are pumped up by an artificial scarcity of the kind that keeps diamonds expensive. And such a scarcity, they suggest, can make it more likely that the leading journals will publish dramatic, but what may ultimately turn out to be incorrect, research.
Dr Ioannidis based his earlier argument about incorrect research partly on a study of 49 papers in leading journals that had been cited by more than 1,000 other scientists. They were, in other words, well-regarded research. But he found that, within only a few years, almost a third of the papers had been refuted by other studies. For the idea of the winner’s curse to hold, papers published in less-well-known journals should be more reliable; but that has not yet been established.
The group’s more general argument is that scientific research is so difficult—the sample sizes must be big and the analysis rigorous—that most research may end up being wrong. And the “hotter” the field, the greater the competition is and the more likely it is that published research in top journals could be wrong.
There also seems to be a bias towards publishing positive results. For instance, a study earlier this year found that among the studies submitted to America’s Food and Drug Administration about the effectiveness of antidepressants, almost all of those with positive results were published, whereas very few of those with negative results were. But negative results are potentially just as informative as positive results, if not as exciting.
The researchers are not suggesting fraud, just that the way scientific publishing works makes it more likely that incorrect findings end up in print. They suggest that, as the marginal cost of publishing a lot more material is minimal on the internet, all research that meets a certain quality threshold should be published online. Preference might even be given to studies that show negative results or those with the highest quality of study methods and interpretation, regardless of the results.
It seems likely that the danger of a winner’s curse does exist in scientific publishing. Yet it may also be that editors and referees are aware of this risk, and succeed in counteracting it. Even if they do not, with a world awash in new science the prestigious journals provide an informed filter. The question for Dr Ioannidis is that now his latest work has been accepted by a journal, is that reason to doubt it?
Of course most published scientific work is wrong. Only those outside of the field don't know this elementary fact. Like every other activity funded by government --and 95% of scientific work is- what you get is not what you paid for.

Posted by: John Morales | December 2, 2009 3:50 AM

Anon @252,253: What are you trying to say — that "most published scientific work is wrong", hence published climate science must be mostly wrong?

Sheesh. Think about it.

Posted by: Anon @252,253 | December 2, 2009 4:06 AM

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

the parenthesis ruined my link!

Posted by: Anon @252,253 etc | December 2, 2009 4:55 AM

"Um, this is a published research finding. ;)"

I am aware of the irony, and so is the Economist, in fact, they cracked they same joke both times they reported on Ioannidis' research some 4 years apart.

I most certainly do not have an alternative. But I depend on Ioannidis and other scientists to come up with solutions to these problems.

I am with Dara O'Briain on this one: Just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps.

Posted by: bitbutter | December 2, 2009 6:13 AM

@Nerd of Redhead
"You pretend to be on our side, but really work the other side."

Spoken like a true sports fan Nerd. In turn my impression of you at this point is someone who's jaded and paranoid. Perhaps understandably so, but it's sad to see anyway.

I encourage you to do a google stalk via my username and linked website to check my background. You very much doubt you'll find anything that can reasonably be construed as evidence of a hidden agenda. Perhaps this might help restore some of your capacity for charity towards strangers.

Posted by: bitbutter | December 2, 2009 10:11 AM

@Nerd of Redhead did you investigate my online activity yet? Please do. I look forward to denting your prejudice about AGW skeptics.

Posted by: John Morales | January 6, 2010 2:09 AM

Annual Australian Climate Statement 2009

Issued 5th January 2010 by the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology