AAP reports from the future

This story from the Australian Associated Press contains the usual scare-mongering from Ian Plimer:

AAP November 19, 2009 01:36pm

Australia will go broke and become the laughing stock of the world if politicians ignore basic science on climate change, a leading global warming sceptic says.

But there is one intriguing detail:

Prof Plimer's comments came as he delivered the annual Essington Lewis Memorial Lecture in honour of a former chief executive and chairman of BHP.

And that lecture won't be delivered until 6pm today (Nov 19).

I think it is awesome that the AAP can report from the future, but I would find it more more interesting if they reported the Lotto results rather than something as predictable as a Plimer lecture.

More like this

>"Australia will go broke [...] if politicians ignore basic science on climate change..."

Plimer would be correct if this is where he started and stopped.

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

[Plimer Nov 12th](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/plimer_calls_his_critics_rent-…)
>*"When you look at my critics -- they are people who are rent seekers. They have everything to gain by continuing the process of frightening people witless, by following the party line, ..."*

Plimer Nov 19th:

>*Australia will go broke and become the laughing stock of the world if politicians ignore basic science on climate change*.

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

Plimer is indeed qualified to tell us all about being the "laughing stock of the world", although he may not have quite realised it yet...

Still no correction(s) from him for the multiple errors contained in his populist book on Climate Change.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

As has been pointed out, the quote: "Australia will go broke and become the laughing stock of the world if politicians ignore basic science on climate change, a leading global warming sceptic says," is entirely correct. Just not in the way AAP--and Plimer--presumably intended it.

By Nils Ross (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

Let's face it, Plimer's having one of his senior moments.
He really does need to look in the mirror if he's going to make pronouncements such as those on his way to the bank.

Hmmm, wait a mo. Ok, it's easy to find fault with Plimer's rants. What about the subject of Tim's post? What game is AAP playing by reporting before the event? For all we know Plimer has had a revelation, seen the light and will admit he was wrong all along.

While reading a post by Gavin on Plimer over at RealClimate (24 Aug 2009) he made the point that 'the Medieval era was far regional in nature, and does not approach the truly global scale of warmth in recent decades.'

The MWP is more complex than many would like to believe. For example, the Thames was said to be frozen for five weeks in 998 AD and 14 weeks in1063, again in 1142 and 1149. It is hard to reconcile that the MWP was warmer than now.

Perhaps the hydrology of the Thames has been altered, in such a way that it can no longer freeze over. Still, you would have to wonder about the proxy data which indicates it was as warm if not warmer than now.

It is fitting that on the day that Plimer is giving this lecture in Adelaide, the city has just set an all time record for the hottest November maximum, 43C.

I hope that the air conditioning breaks down in the lecture theatre :-)

Other centers in South Australia were as hot as 46C (115F).

By Dirk Hartog (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are doing immense damage to the public's view of the ethical behaviour of scientists in general. The Plimer and Carter approach is to say that since scientists receive government grants (not for their own salary, by the way), they must be biased to the party-line. In an indirect way, Plimer and Carter use this as a rationale for why their kind of sceptic generally doesn't get published in the appropriate academic literature. Of course, firstly they need to actually submit draft articles...if they want to be published in the field.

Anyway, some rural reporters have commented on just how deeply suspicious rural folk are of the major scientific institutions, and the scientists by extension. And of course, the IPPC too. It is very frustrating given just how much scientific research in Australia goes into problems of direct relevance to ensuring profitability of farmers.

The Plimer and Carter caricture of scientists and their motivations is indefensible. While Plimer might be capable of remaining independent yet picking up very nicely paying mining company directorships, at least in his own mind, perhaps he should consider that other scientists might be primarily motivated by curiosity - not cash!

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

Donald Oats - The sad thing is (as Pure Poison pointed out the other) people like Carter receive funding from the ARC too, but commentators like Bolt don't bother telling their readers that because it doesn't fit in with the conspiracy theory.

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

From Plimer via the AAP link:

"Science does not operate by consensus,bullying,authority,government decree,fads or fashion,personal beliefs or vested interests."

Clearly,he's no scientist!

"It's no secret,the more energy a country uses,the richer it becomes."

Well,that settles it..

Regarding the Thames freezing over -

Generally, by the time you reach London, the only way it can freeze is by floes coming from further upstream and getting stuck together at a bridge, then freezing over. Harder since the original narrow arched London Bridge was bought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge

Plus I suspect that London, being a large city in a shallow valley, has a pretty major UHI which would mitigate against the river freezing. Even so, the idea of a multi-week freeze of any kind in lowland England just seems laughable now; you might just about get multi week frosts in the higher parts of the peak district.

Last winter was regarded as 'freakishly cold' because we had real snow (several inches!) for a whole week. And one night my garden weather station recorded -8C.

By Andrew Dodds (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

It's all a bit ironic given that Essington Lewis was one of the biggest and beat rent-seekers in Australia's entire history, and that's saying something.

DavidK (7): "What about the subject of Tim's post? What game is AAP playing by reporting before the event?"

Good question. Interestingly (or not) the AAP syndicated piece that Tim linked to was released by news.com.au, which is part of the Murdoch empire. Yes, the global "news" outlet that brought you The 'Strayan, The Herald Sun and The Times, among others. The independent, free-thinking transnational that pays wages to Bolta, Planet Janet et al. Maybe they just got over-excited and ejacul... released the article prematurely.

Sort of connected to this (just) is that a tro... someone who used to post at this blog called janama turned up at crikey recently on a thread there about the Bolta (which must be sheer coinicidence, surely...). Suffice to say janama is pretty much the same sort of tr... misguided soul as previous, the only thing that seems to have changed is his willingness to abuse people he's never met (he calls Tim Lambert a very arrogant prick, not that Tim would give a flying f**k I don't suppose).

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

It's a real shame that Media Watch has recessed for the austral summer. They would have loved the AAP prescience story...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

elgordo
>For example, the Thames was said to be frozen for five weeks in 998 AD and 14 weeks in1063, again in 1142 and 1149. It is hard to reconcile that the MWP was warmer than now.

"...the Thames was said to be frozen for five weeks..."

Ah yes, that sounds very scientific.

It feels warmer now, but a 'feeling' isn't science either.
It is common knowledge that climate changes, that has never been the issue, despite deniers rantings and ravings.

Re #11 Connor - I agree with you mate, it is sad. My opinion of these turkeys is that no matter how brilliant they are or were at their mining consulting geology, it is despicable behaviour to publish a book on this basis:

By contrast to what Barry Brooks says, this book is not a book of science. It's a book for the public who have felt quite disenfranchised and quite helpless that they have scientists talking down to them and they know there's a smell, they can't quite work out where the smell's from, but they know there's a smell, and this book is to give the public some information such that they can say, I think we're being led astray.

And then to use the book as a platform for attacking science that has made it to the best academic journals, and that has survived testing by other scientists.

By doing this Plimer sidesteps the entire process by which science is conducted. Read the first sentence of the Lateline quote again - "It is not a book of science." Astonishing!

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Isn't is simply that the AAP received a press release in advance from Plimer or the lecture organisers and were a little careless in how it was reported?

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

sloppy reporting.

this article in the [WSJ](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487043359045744968509398467…) is even worse.

the most important part of the article gets reported in a sidenote. and then forgotten for conclusions.

Mr. Briffa denounces Mr. McIntyre's work as "demonstrably biased" because it uses "a narrower area and range of sample sites." He says he and his colleagues have now built a new chronology using still more data. Here, as in similar graphs by other researchers, the spike soars once again. Mr. McIntyre's "work has little implication for our published work or any other work that uses it," Mr. Briffa concludes.

right wing pundits reporting. sigh.

Well, this is refreshing honesty, although it's the most indirect way I've ever seen of saying "The dog ate my homework!"

"Mr. McIntyre declares no interest in debunking The Theory in toto, nor in discouraging efficient energy use. His blog will disappoint those seeking anything more political than technical analyses." -- WSJ

Riiiiiight.

His blog will disappoint those seeking anything more political than technical analyses.

Sort of like the WSJ editorial page itself, that bastion of unbiased, objective, opinion without a trace of ideological, politically-driven analysis ...

Last night I saw Tony Abbott being questioned on Lateline. He didn't want to set himself up as an expert on climate change, he said, but, "for a politician" he knew enough about it. Subsequently he came up with the most hackneyed of denialist arguments (such as why has there been no linear increase in the temperature over the last ten years in spite of the fact that CO2-emissions have continuously grown).

What the hell does that mean: "for a politician" he knows enough about it? This is a guy who wishes to participate in deciding the fate of this country and then turns out to have the most shallow knowledge of one of the most important issues facing it. He escaped answering the other Tony's question whether he had read the IPCC reports. I bet he hasn't.

By Arie Brand (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Re #24.

Shorter Tony Abbott: I'll cling to my own views regardless of what the science says.

On a separate point of note, it is amusing that all the 'it's been cooling since 1998' brigade suddenly appear to understand the difference between weather and climate. The spate of temperature records being broken for November is just weather, true, but it is good to see the cogs starting to churn over with a couple of the denialist mob I've been arguing with for years.

Yes, in any given year you would expect to see the occasional high/low record being broken. But we're seeing some November records being smashed by 4-5 degrees and first recorded November heatwaves in areas. I think it may be starting to sink in that perhaps something out of the ordinary is happening. On top of the records from earlier this year with the Black Saturday weather conditions and against a solar minimum (and nothing exceptional regarding El Nino), it's good to see some doubt creeping in.

And bad. I wish the science was wrong as this is giving us a taste of the future and what may be normal weather in another 40-50 years. It makes me wonder how long it will be until one of our state capitals posts a 50 degree day. And if the likes of Plimer, Carter, Bolt etc will still be pushing their ideological view. The way things are going, it may even happen in their lifetimes.

Paul UK: I am a proud denier of AGW. I come here to prepare for the political battle ahead, unlike the mad monk who didn't even bother to prepare for an interview with Tony Jones.

The source I used is 'Agricultural Records AD 220 -1977' by J.M. Stratton and Jack Houghton-Brown. Published by John Baker in 1978.

If comments in Plimer's book are flawed, it should be exposed.

Steve (16) What you said - makes sense. Premature ejaculation LOL.

As to janama, isn't he one of Jen's Jackals the contributors over at her blog site. Apparently she's gone walk-about leaving the jackals misguided souls to hound other sites.

If comments in Plimer's book are flawed, it should be exposed.

Maybe you can help spread the message

Paul UK: I am a proud denier of AGW. I come here to prepare for the political battle ahead, unlike the mad monk who didn't even bother to prepare for an interview with Tony Jones.

El Gordo's refreshing, at least, in his honesty regarding his denialism. Science has nothing to do with it.

dhogaza, Agreed. And he saves us some of the depressing work of trawling through some of the denialist sites.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Saw that Abbott interview (a rarity, as I usually throw the TV out the window when his mug appears on it). I think he did the science based community a favour. He came across as a slippery dishonest hack. You know, his usual self. He convinced nobody, and was just preaching to his own constituency. I thought the interviewer (Tony Jones) did a pretty good job exposing him. I nearly cried with laughter when Abbott started blathering on about how AGW proponents had a theological flavour to their arguments. (For those not versed in Oz politics, Abbott is a failed Jesuit seminarian, and a hard right wing authoritarian Catholic head kicker. I was bought up a Catholic, so I know his type well. They are, as Lewis Black so eloquently put it, 10 hairs away from being a gibbering baboon. I have nothing but contempt for Abbott.)

Donald Oats @ 10

I would not be too worried about that. I come from National Party farming stock and know them quite well, and I can tell you that whatever they say in public, in private they are preparing for the worst. Their public comments are not a reliable guide, as that community like to stick together and not rock their local social boat. When Barnaby Joyce works the crowd and extracts one or two comments apparently supporting him, that don't mean shit. They actually work quite closely with scientists, and have done for decades. Don't be misled by their conservative social views, they understand the value of hard science, at least as far as agricultural science goes. They have seen the massive benefits it can bring to their bottom line.

(BTW, Barnaby Joyce, the National Party leader does not accurately reflect the views of the NP's constituency. Many of them regard him as being too loopy even for the Nationals, who have actually always been largely pragmatic agrarian socialists.)

These folk are the least of your concerns. It is the Abbotts and (Nick) Minchins and Joyces of this world, the city dwelling ultra conservatives ideologues, that you gotta be worried about.

Crooks? Oh yes? Have fun with that one, Lank.

Now, let's imagine you're right for a moment ...

Physics doesn't change just because someone is (in your mind) a crook. They could be corrupt as hell, and CO2 would still cause warming.

Lank, I may be hopelessly naive, but I can't see anything particularly "exposing" in the emails posted on wuwt, Lucia, etc so far. It's all a lot of shop talk. Some people get hot under the collar at the public abuse they cop from McIntyre. There's a reference to a "trick"; people who work with analysing complex systems and data talk about technical tricks, hacks, kludges, etc all the time. Big deal.

Stuff about frustrating FOI requests is disturbing, but falls under the category "wrong, but human". If I was constantly publicly maligned by McIntyre, as many climate scientists are, I'd be disinclined to cooperate with him too no matter what my legal obligations might be (or what McIntyre might claim them to be). Showing that Hadley scientists are petty humans like the rest of us in no way invalidates their work.

By James Haughton (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Australia will go broke and become the laughing stock of the world if politicians ignore basic science on climate change, a leading global warming sceptic says.

The problem is, this is exactly right. Is it unintentional irony or is he simply rubbing it in that his audience is immune to hints?

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Hank: I had a quick look and became curious. Why did Keith have to 'hide the decline'?

Phil Jones couldn't have meant temperatures, because in 1999 we had just come off the back of that monstrous El Nino.

These emails might be fake, remember Godwin.

Re. no. 31 "He convinced nobody" Yes, but the trouble is that the nobodies he didn't convince have no input in the decisions that have to be made - he has.

By Arie Brand (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

I also saw the Abbott interview on Lateline last night. Embarrassing stuff. On the one hand, claims to be sceptical and then says he hasn't studied the science closely. Jones completely ripped him apart when he referred to the Hadley Centre assessment, compared to what Abbott said which was straight out of Plimer's book.

One wonders what has happened to the Liberal party. Why are so many of them willing to listen to a few discretted climate sceptic hacks over the overwhelming scientific evidence. This is particularly remarkable given that even Howard at the last election adopted an emission scheme.

Turnbull really needs to show some leadership. It would be embarrassing for a major party to vote against the deal that is likely to be struck between McFarlane and Wong (which is already a huge compromise to big carbon emitters). It would look like an increasingly confused and out of touch party.

Thanks WotWot (#31), that's a bit more reassuring. However, farmers are causing themselves trouble if they don't speak up a bit and say "Hang on, Joycie, but what about all that help given to our farming sector from those same scientists you are saying are in some worldwide conspiracy and are lying about AGW, climate change, etc? What changed their minds about helping farmers?"

By staying too silent they risk utter alienation from city folk who only see the public nodding heads whenever Carter, Plimer, or Joyce speak. Sooner or later someone needs to speak out when a news camera is there to record it.

BTW, my broader family still has farming in it, NE Vic. One part of the family pulled up stumps on their farming in NSW in the early 80's, a bit after the 82/83 drought (I was there then and it wasn't a picnic but the beer was cold!), and then the slowly increasing salinity in the water and ground. Turns out it was good timing.

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

TrueSceptic:

Of course, that's exactly what it is, but it's a very sloppy Journalism 101 thing to do, is all.

If Joe Romm had done it, it would be a hanging offense, of course.

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Hadley CRU news update...If you canât trust the scientists who propose AGW warming, how can you trust their âscienceâ...Crooks? Oh yes! #33.

"These emails might be fake, remember Godwin" #37 Oh yes blame poor Godwin. I suspect he's at it again! Hadley must be full of Godwins.

James 'I may be hopelessly naive' Haughton cant see anything wrong here. Do you do this kind of research James?..."Iâve just completed Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from1961 for Keithâs to hide the decline."

Hadley CRU news update...If you canât trust the scientists who propose AGW warming, how can you trust their âscienceâ...Crooks? Oh yes! #33.

The physicists who established CO2's role in warming are all dead, died before e-mail, died before the internet.

James 'I may be hopelessly naive' Haughton cant see anything wrong here. Do you do this kind of research James?...

I see something wrong here: felony hacking of a server on the 'net.

I hope the perps are caught, and spend a decade or so in jail.

Oh, and Lank is jumping on the denialist bandwagon of quote-mining out of context to prove a point.

This will be a damaging episode, because while the far-right deems that writing a DRM breaker that isn't necessarily used to break the law is, in itself, illegal ... they're already embracing these thieves as heroes and will do so forever.

Thousands of private e-mails provides thousands of opportunities for quote-mining, of course, totally distorting the thread of conversation or concern as understood in context.

It's a huge victory for the anti-science, dark-age proponents. Truth doesn't matter to them.

Thats right dhogaza throw them in jail. That'll silence anyone that disagrees with you. You clearly think its okay to ignore and distort science to promote self serving agenda...the 'dhogaza school of science' - you could open up a class at Long Bay!

Lank, any opportunity to talk about anything but the science hey?

Please state exactly the crime (or at the very least dishost practice) you are accusing these "crooks" of? Back it up man. Put your mined quotes in context and lay it out, or is this just another 'smear and run' from a another turdphile?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Heres a good update link for you dhogaza... http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y200…

"Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous "hockey-stick" graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:....

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998."

Lank, care you back yourself [as requested](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…)?

You could start by explaining what the context and meaning of the quote you are pushing.

Alternatively, does the the title 'smear and run turdphile' sit well on your shoulders? I reckon its starting to describe your behaviour so far. Go on, prove me wrong Lank.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet 'turdphile' Akerman has a good point. "AAP can report from the future" hardly ranks as science of the year.

The Deltoid dog pack sure likes to get stuck in to the likes of Plimer and Carter but when the tables are turned it seems like they have trouble backing up.

HadCrut is the science authority for all AGW legislation in bonny England; any person or group would have actionable grounds for legal redress for any provable disavantage, loss or otherwise quantifiable damages, including psychological distress, against the relevant government authorities who have enacted legislation relying on HadCrut information. Those government departments, in due course, would join HadCrut to the proceedings. Normally it is a defence avaiable to a government department against damage or loss caused to citizens through its negligence if there has been no malice; deception and obfuscation are examples of malice; so if the Jone's adjustment epistle is real and Godwin hasn't taken up employ with HadCrut then malice appears to be present.

On our own sunny shores, with the release of Penny's beach and surf report, if it can be proved that she wilfully excluded rlevant information or misrepresented official [ie IPCC] prognostications, then there may be a bit of flotsam and jetsam malice floating around here too. Happy days.

Well, this one is bringing out all the little 'smear and run' turdphiles.

Anothony Cox, care to backup your smears by stating the practice you are accusing these people of. As I challenged Lank, put the mined quotes in context and lay it out for us in plan speak.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Well said Cohenite. I suspect that there will be a huge fallout from this in bonny England. I also expect resignations, finger pointing and excuses. Probably they will crucify the Godwin.

Penny and her advisors should be very afraid...

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong recently released a report claiming 250,000 Australian homes could be drowned by rising seas by 2100 due to global warming. This widely publicised report claimed warming could cause the seas to rise not by the 59cm that the IPCC model determined as the upper limit, but by 1.1m or perhaps even 1.90m. ...alarmism at its best!

Here we go again, the merest scrap of information, true or not, produces a cacaphony of wild claims - fraud, cover-up, crooks - from the denialist echo-chamber.

They know only one tune and belt it out regardless of the situation.

Just like the recent Steve McIntyre inspired exercise in stupid behaviour. They read some claims they didn't really understand which set them off into a frenzy. It was all so dim-witted that even McIntyre had to eventually try and hose them down a bit. It's the dogs at night scenario - one dogs starts barking, which causes others to join in and soon every dog in the neigbourhood is barking madly and none of them know why.

This is ground-hog day. Quite appropriate for Anthony Cox to appear.

Steady on, Lank. There was genuine concern that this might be a green conspiracy to embarrass the sceptics in Copenhagen.

But no, the emails appear genuine. So this is the work of a disgruntled insider, a whistle blower.

If it spreads like a virus on the web, you would expect the msm to pick the story up and run with it. I won't be holding my breath.

cohenite:

We really appreciate your comforting words, but how soon before we get to say 'criminal negligence'?

Let's hope it's before the next election.

Janet, I think we know each other; weren't you the blond haired women at the feminist meetings my second wife took me too? And what challenge are you talking about?

Donald @ 40

The action is taking place behind the scenes. Watch how the rural people vote, not what they say. The Nats still operate very much on the strong paternal leader type model, and they tend not to publicly contradict him, no matter how stupid he might be.

A very large chunk of Australia's rural sector is on increasingly marginal land, and they are at the sharp receiving end of climate change effects. My recently retired father spent most of his professional scientific life working with them, from the farm level up to national leadership, and he says most of them are now quietly accepting that climate is changing and humans are at least substantially responsible.

The Nats are losing power all over the place, have been for a decade, in no small part because of extremist hysterical idiots like Joyce. He is not well respected among the broad rural community, they largely pay lip service only. Problem is they have not got any body much better.

I do not want to overstate the case, the Nats will be around for a while yet. But look at the hard electoral numbers, they are in serious sustained decline. As a party I doubt they will be in existence 3-4 elections from now.

Credit to Turnbull for trying to drag his party and the Coalition into the 21st century. Good luck to him.

And credit to your family for seeing the writing on the wall in the 80s. That was also when the big shift off the land occurred in my family, quite profitably too.

It's the dogs at night scenario - one dogs starts barking, which causes others to join in and soon every dog in the neigbourhood is barking madly and none of them know why.

Sums it up nicely. Pavlov would have a field day with them.

Marion Delgado -

..it's a very sloppy Journalism 101 thing to do, is all.

It's standard practice for speeches to be distributed under embargo. Why this was released early isn't clear but it's hardly something you can hang the journo for.

You can call it sloppy journalism I suppose not in the sense that, say, being [conned into thinking Monckton is a British MP](http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/carbon-trading-Alan-…) is sloppy journalism.

Jimmy Nightingale:

It makes me wonder how long it will be until one of our state capitals posts a 50 degree day

The temperature of heatwaves is determined by the summer temperature in central Australia which is probably warming about twice the rate of the world as a whole. The underlying rate of global warming is currently about 2 deg C per century so the average rate of increase of heatwave records would be about 4 deg C per century. Melbourne recorded 46.4 deg C on 7/2/09 so at the present underlying rate of global warming (even assuming no acceleration), Melbourne will probably reach 50 deg C by 2100. I think no acceleration is pretty optimistic though.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Perhaps Anthony Cox, former divorce lawyer and nascent climate researcher extraordinaire, could advice us on the penalties for illegally hacking into someone's non-public-access electronic files, for passing them on to third parties, and for said third parties publicly displaying such material without permission from the original owners, from whom the material was stolen.

Having been personally involved in a whistleblower case myself, in a matter involving the revelation of fabricated data, I would be especially interested in AC's considered opinion in the implications of any false claims that might be involved in the current kerfuffle.

By Bermard J. (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

Woo hoo. Tony Abbott just got torn a new one by his leader on national television. Said Abbott's views are all over the place and inconsistent.

wotwot...

I think I would rather believe what they say. The country people I meet are hard wired and up to speed. They also go back generations on the land in the same spot and know that flood follows drought.

There is no AGW signal, just the background noise of natural variability.

I don't know how I can be plainer Janet; if the leaked documents are real then certain admissions appear to have been made which may sustain legal redress in the way I have described. In any event there are worse things to worry about;

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/177346/climate-change-pushes-poor-women-to-…

But every cloud has its silver lining;

http://besceptical.blogspot.com/2009/10/be-sceptical.html

And have you seen the ads?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/climate-skeptics-party-run-4-tele…

BJ; how do you know the material was stolen; maybe the leak was by one of the 'team' who had a proprietal right to the material; in any event what damage has occurred?

Cohenite...by acclamation, scrap the fourth ad to avoid being accused of alarmist tactics. Heaven forbid!

>*I don't know how I can be plainer Janet; if the leaked documents are real then certain admissions appear to have been made which may sustain legal redress in the way I have described.*

Anthony, you could be clearer by simply being clear about anything at all. As it stands you are saying "*certain admissions appear to have been made*".

Back it up, what admission have been made?

You simply smear and run, you've provided no detail as to any wrong doing on behalf of those who you smear.

I've only seen out of context quote mining repeated by turdphiles (who like Lank, and yourself fail to be clear about any wrong doing of those you smear). It appear turdphiles want to leave the impression of wrong doing, but who only have a bunch of mined quote, completely out of context, and without understanding.

You can't even plainly state the charge you are making.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo, I note like Anthony Cox and Lank , you are niether upto [the challenge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…) of offering anything but bogus bluster.

[Like Cox](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…), you change the topic when challenged simply state your charge. I guess you seem to be satisfied with fostering smear and innuendo, forget the substance hey el gordo.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 19 Nov 2009 #permalink

There is no AGW signal, just the background noise of natural variability.

Yaaaawn.

Janet,
Don't bother ith Cohers, he's all bluster.

"if the leaked documents are real then certain admissions appear to have been made which may sustain legal redress in the way I have described."

This doesn't actually mean anything substantial. All it means to me is that if the emails are true we will have to work out what they mean... And that would most likely be 'nothing'.

Yes Nathan,

It seems you set a challenge for the smear-and-run team and the reply is either (a) bluster or (b) chirping of crickets. Or: try a, if called out-> switch to b.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

A lot is being made of "hide the decline".

I am pretty sure I know what that must be referring to. This is unofficial; I have heard nothing on it from any of the parties involved.

However, it is no secret at all that there is indeed spurious decline in proxy based temperature records from tree rings in the Northern Hemisphere. There's an extensive literature on it; there's no doubt at all about a decline, and that it is spurious. A recent review paper on this spurious decline is D'Arrigo et al (2007) On the âdivergence problemâ in northern forests: A review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes, in Global and Planetary Change
Volume 60, Issues 3-4, February 2008, Pages 289-305; doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.03.004

The email in question appears to be speaking of the WMO statement made in 1999: you can see it here: On the Status of Global Climate in 1999. Sure enough; it does have a diagram, showing the three paleorecords described in the email, and if you look at the paper by Briffa where the decline is present, is explicit in the paper and discussed in earlier papers... this is the "divergence problem".

Basically, a temperature record is obtained by combining the current instrument record with the proxy records from the past. There's nothing underhand about removing the spurious decline -- it's there in the papers, it is extensively studied, and that's why that record can't be extended into the latter half of the twentieth century.

The speed at which people picked out this email and trumpeted it all over the net without any apparent effort to figure out what was being discussed is despicable. It's not a hoax or a deception; it's a simple repeat of what is already completely open and clear in the scientific literature; and it exposes -- yet again -- the so-called "skeptics" as just the opposite. Credulous nitwits who jump on any possible hint of a problem as a grand hoax. Sheesh.

By Duae Quartunciae (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

I'm actually quite curious how this will play out.
The few emails I saw at the Air Vent didn't look like much more than pretty ordinary emails. It's hard to see how they could be damning evidence of anything.

More important I suppose is what the skeptics will make of the code. Will they stop the stupid chorus to 'free the code'? I noticed they didn't do anything with the GISS code they got.

You know, reading the spill over here it makes me think that Marohasy unintentionally perhaps provided us a public service.

As to Tim's original thingy about AP appearing to travel in time, there's no mystery. Speeches, etc are released ahead of time to media organisations so the person delivering the speech or the host group can ensure coverage, quoting etc at the right time. It seems some one on the news desk at AP just mixed up the time of release. The question we should be asking is why does Plimer or the Essington people think that what Plimer has to say is so important that it has to be released ahead of time to journalists. Sounds like to me that Plimer is perhaps well versed in using the media.

Duae

I get the feeling this could all backfire quite nastily on Jeff ID etc. I get the feeling more than anything they will look like conspiracy nuts...

The idiots are all delighted that some climate researchers are paying attention to their antics,and are not all that well disposed towards them; it seems simply being noticed is enough to validate their conspiracy theories. Though it's curious that they should find this necessary; they've never needed evidence for any of their convictions anyway. The 'revelation' of collaboration,discussion and tension between colleagues is shocking! Quick,the salts...
This will no doubt encourage more nonsense under parliamentary privilege here and there,but,Coxenite,are hacked documents admissable in your projective legal fantasies?

Nathan -- we can only hope; but there ain't no justice. The backfire will make no difference to them; any more than the recent kerfuffle over the tree ring records that McIntyre bungled so badly. Of course they are conspiracy nuts; but people love a good conspiracy story. This will be a big noise for a little while, and then it will all die down again until they get their next hobby horse. Sigh. The difference here is the volume of material; it will be interesting and most likely nauseating to watch it play out.

By Duae Quartunciae (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

So, "The Decline" is really a "spurious decline in proxy based temperature records from tree rings in the Northern Hemisphere."

Trenberth's e-mail which has been confirmed by Jones:

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , âPhilip D. Jonesâ , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earthâs global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we canât account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we canât. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

You have to love those snowflake proxies.

Coehnite,

James lovelock who is a scientist, you may have heard of these people, had a very good, one sentence, answer to your reprint of the email about seeing colder temps when he was interviewed earlier this year on Nature video. Go look it up, watch it and if you don't understand what he says go ask any engineer hanging around the Hunter Street Mall up near your end. Just beware, they will look at you as if you are slow.

One thing is for sure, RealClimate has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine.

These emails "prove" that HadCrut have been faking data, "tricking" people, "hiding declines", etc, in about the same way that the [Bohemian Grove tapes](http://www.jonronson.com/them_bohemia.html) "prove" that George Bush is a satanist who practices human sacrifice to a giant owl effigy. There are a whole lot of innocent ways in which the "hide the decline" reference can be read; thanks to Duae for providing one plausible reading. Given the way it's been trumpeted, this is surely the "best" that Anthony's buddies have. A lot of fuss over nothing except an invasion of privacy.

By James Haughton (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

>One thing is for sure, RealClimate has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine.

Oh, it's so easy to give a simple personal statement that means nothing.

Some more examples:

"One thing is for sure, NASA has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine."

"One thing is for sure, The Heartland Institute has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine."

"One thing is for sure, Exxon Mobil has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine."

"One thing is for sure, The British Antarctic Survey has been exposed as a blatant propaganda machine."

Just have a political opinion and put the organisation you hate in the sentence.

@85. Unfortunately, James, expect yet another string of newspapers (the usual suspects) touting this as "yet more proof" that it's all one big conspiracy. They WILL refer to the Briffa case, regardless of the fact that Briffa completely demolished McIntyre's criticism, making it two nails in the coffin of Copenhagen (there's plenty already anyway).

Anthony,

Are you still trying to figure out that small problem Bernard set you months and months ago?

Or have you just given up?

One thing is for sure, el gordo knows nothing.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

The speed at which people picked out this email and trumpeted it all over the net without any apparent effort to figure out what was being discussed is despicable. It's not a hoax or a deception; it's a simple repeat of what is already completely open and clear in the scientific literature; and it exposes -- yet again -- the so-called "skeptics" as just the opposite. Credulous nitwits who jump on any possible hint of a problem as a grand hoax. Sheesh.

very well said.

i actually do expect, that they will find some ugly stuff (or at least something that can be spun that way) in that amount of data. but they broke the news, before they found any real thing.

it is exposing them as a pretty disgusting crowd.

I just found this email on a used computer I recently purchased...

From: Kenneth Trenberth

To: Michael Mann

Subject: I'm about to cry

Michael, "The fact is that we canât account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we canât."

That's right, I said travesty.... if only that damn climate would start cooperating!

We need to find more signs of potential disaster soon or God forbid, we may be mocked.

Now listen to me and listen to me good, some clown recently released information showing October was the third coldest on record for the U.S...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=10&submi…

We need to counter this sort of blasphemy at once!

I am hereby ordering the immediate release of the backup cute Polar Bear pictures. In addition, we need to call the media and have them release more articles on how the cold is caused by warming....

http://sify.com/news/cold-wave-attributed-to-global-warming-news-nation…

While your at it, have them dig up some of those articles that explain how more snow is due to warming....

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200703150312.htm

Time is of the essence. Remember, up is down, black is white, cold is warm and most important, we need to prevent a travesty.

With Warmest Regards,

Kenneth

P.S. With any luck, I will not be sending you my usual Gingerbread house gift this Christmas

http://www.terradaily.com/2006/061211182846.nwcc15td.html

Zoot,

Re your post *84.

Exactly.

I think it is awesome that the AAP can report from the future, but I would find it more more interesting if they reported the Lotto results rather than something as predictable as a Plimer lecture.

Yet another Dano line into the lexicon. If Tim uses 'mendacicization', Dano likely will have his own Wiki entry.

;o)

Best,

D

i actually do expect, that they will find some ugly stuff (or at least something that can be spun that way) in that amount of data. but they broke the news, before they found any real thing.

Wait til all the news breaks of all the events out in nature that happened as a result of the e-mail whistleblowing breakthrough ClimateGate discovery:

o Glaciers reversing course, now advancing

o Arctic ice re-growing

o Plants moving back south and blooming later

o Animals moving back south and downhill

o Sea levels falling

o Crop nutrition increasing again now that CO2 washed out of air

o Oceans are no longer acidifying, corals unbleaching

o Land-use is improving increasing albedo

o Permafrost freezing

o Freshwater flow decreasing into the Arctic

o Hg deposition from coal plants lessening

o N deposition reversing and P no longer controlling freshwater ecosystems

o The naughties no longer hottest decade

My gosh, there will be a bevy of amateur scientist hiring, documenting all the environmental reversals, I tell ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Best,

D

[realclimate](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/) has an answer up. very good, as a fast reply was necessary.

but if you want to have some fun, go over to [Spencer](http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/11/global-warmings-blue-dress-moment-t…)

As of this writing, the BBC is the first mainstream news source to cover the story. But instead of discussing the content of any of the e-mails, the BBC is focusing on the illegal nature of the computer system breach.

this is rich, isn t it? so the BBC does not publish private e-mails, but looks at the illegal nature of the breach?!? how dare they!

Danzero - these things sould like what happened in the past, the Arctic was quite clear in the 1920s.
I think the amatuer have been un-covered. Falsifying data is professional is it now - suppose only if it serves a purpose eh. That is not how I did science.

By Perfect Prick (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

I notice that continuing to run away from [my challenge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…), Anthony Cox (cohenite), has continued to his turdphile obsesion of smear-and-run.

When challenged to simply state your charge. Anothony Cox and his fellow turdphiles, seem rather satisfied, even revelling in fostering smear and innuendo, says a lot.

el gordo now that you've joined the ranks of the turdphiles, perhaps you could explain just how anyone or anything has been exposed as propaganda? You'll find plenty of examples on this thread, showing that its your smear-and-run tactics that have been exposed as propaganda.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

more fun. this simply had to happen.

those who published those e-mails got under massive attack from their own side. one [Michelle Malkin](http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/17/sarah-palins-private-e-mail-hacked…)

what about the lowlifes who are now gleefully splashing the alleged contents of ... e-mail account all over the Internet?

oh no. that was Michelle talking about Palin. about the [current event](http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/20/the-global-warming-scandal-of-the-…), her approach is slightly different:

That said: The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century â and have massive bearing on the climate change legislation being considered by our lawmakers here at home. Helpful rundowns of all the latest developments at Hot Air, Shout First, Andrew Bolt, and from James Delingpole at the Telegraph, who sums up some of the most damning e-mails:

she joined the lowlifes....

These are not private emails. They are coming from public universities and government sites. They would be subject, for example, to an FOIA, except, of course, Phil Jones in several of the emails was advising his correspondents to delete emails to frustrate FOIA requests. My lawyer friends tell me that would be a felony in this state; what it would get you in the UK I don't know.

If you want to send a private email, get a gmail address, and send it from your own computer. .

Akerman:

What's with the ad hominem? Your language suggests you are just a girly man 'hiding' behind a skirt. I know it's distasteful for you, but take the time to go through the emails over at Bolter's blog.

Indications are that Joseph Goebbels was on the money with his throwaway line that 'truth is the greatest enemy of the state'.

Gerard Harbison, so does that mean the FOIA permits me to demand for the US's nuclear weapon activation codes, since after all they're owned by the government? Can I also demand for the contents of all your e-mails that you've ever sent to a .gov address?

* * *

el gordo says,

> What's with the ad hominem?

and then immediately after that,

> Your language suggests you are just a girly man 'hiding' behind a skirt.

Enough said.

* * *

Meanwhile, I think I've identified the Russian server which was distributing the e-mails.

Tim,

You obviously live in a different world zone in Australia.

Have you not NOTICED the considerable interest elsewhere in the CRU email records?

Stiil, you might as well continue,and this is a little cruel, living in your antipodean detachment from the rest of us.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Shorter Dave Andrews:

Anyone who doesn't have a full-time job devoted to obsessing over those leaked CRU e-mails is obviously detached from reality.

OK, I posted my comment, #102, above based on the headline for this thread without reading the comments. Obviously commenters have picked up on the story of CRU's emails.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Gerard Harbison, so does that mean the FOIA permits me to demand for the US's nuclear weapon activation codes, since after all they're owned by the government? Can I also demand for the contents of all your e-mails that you've ever sent to a .gov address?

No, silly, because that's classified material. There is absolutely no reason the CRU material should be classified, and it isn't. But you could file a FOIA request with the University of Nebraska for the contents of my University email account here, with the warning that they will charge you for the cost of reproducing the email.

I'm surprised people don't know this stuff.

el gordo,

Smear-and-run is a behaviour. That you practice the behaviour is damning of you. Calling you out on your behaviour is the opposite of ad-hom.

Those seeking out, and revelling in (and continued adherence to), smear-and-run behaviour is well described as turdphilia.

Don't like the label? Then don't practice the behaviour. And answer [my challenge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…).

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Gerard Harbison:

> There is absolutely no reason the CRU material should be classified, and it isn't.

And how would you know?

> But you could file a FOIA request with the University of Nebraska for the contents of my University email account here, with the warning that they will charge you for the cost of reproducing the email.

OK, but I don't want to pay the cost of reproducing the e-mails, so can I simply crack into your university mail account and download the mails and do whatever I want with them? Is that OK? After all, they're public material right?

> I'm surprised people don't know this stuff.

Given that you had to rely on your "lawyer friends" to supposedly figure out these things, it's not that surprising.

Harbison: it is a felony to hack a server. Hack my public site, and despite the fact that I've made information on it public, you've still committed a felony.

The content of the emails should be judged by everyone else in world disclosing their emails, lets not just focus on the poor sods who the watts crowed want to single out.

I think we should encourage a continuous series of email hacks to fuel empty debate. We don't need to argue the science if we continuously bring up cherry picked, out of context quotes and make unspecific insinuations as to their possible meaning.

(BTW Gerard Harbison's argument is as bankrupt as any).

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

But you could file a FOIA request with the University of Nebraska for the contents of my University email account here, with the warning that they will charge you for the cost of reproducing the email.
I'm surprised people don't know this stuff.

Fine. Now go break into some of the university's server and try, as your defense, claiming that "well, I could've gotten the information using FOIA requests anyway therefore I've committed no crime".

> The content of the emails should be judged by everyone else in world disclosing their emails,

Starting with all of James Inhofe's e-mail communications. Drown Inhofe with a ton of FOIA requests, and I'm sure Harbison will suddenly experience a profound change of heart and realize that privacy is a very very important thing i ndeed.

IJI:

Knock yourself out. It's not my computer, and I don't treat it as if it were my personal property. I suspect Inhofe knows very well how to protect himself from frivolous FOIAs, but heck, do the experiment. I've filed a few FOIAs in my time; it's a useful exercise.

dhogaza:

It is indeed a felony to hack a server. We don't actually know that's how these emails were released, but if it is, you are indeed welcome to heap on the unknown individual who did this all the righteous indignation and moral opprobrium you bestow on the thousands of other hacks that happen daily. After all, it's the hacking you're mad about, not the nature of what was discovered, right?

You people are confused. This is public information. The means of releasing it were likely illegal, but the information itself is neither secret nor private.

We don't actually know that's how these emails were released, but if it is

The University has already gone to the police. Presumably due to the contents of the server logs.

After all, it's the hacking you're mad about, not the nature of what was discovered, right?

I haven't seen anything in the content to be angry about. But, yes, I get angry at felons. I've had servers hacked before and it pisses me off.

You people are confused. This is public information. The means of releasing it were likely illegal, but the information itself is neither secret nor private.

Responses to FOIA requests will redact private phone numbers, etc, which have been included in the hacked copies of the server contents, so, no, asshole, it's NOT all public information accessible through FOIA requests.

Riding the moral high horse named "felony hacking of a server". Amazing.

Also, copyrighted materials for which an organization doesn't have the right to distribute also is explicitly exempted from disclosure by the FOIA process.

In other words, you can't force a federal organization to disclose stuff it has no legal right to disclose.

At least some of the data being distributed by the hackers falls into this category.

Actually I should've said "copyrighted or otherwise protected ..." the data CRU has no right to disclose is protected by legal agreements with the owners of the data.

It's similar to the Briffa situation where McIntyre has been castigating him and accusing him of all sorts of nefarious shit because Briffa refused to release data which was provided to CRU by russian researchers under an explicit agreement which didn't allow CRU to release the data themselves.

I see, dhogaza, you have all Michael Mann's charm and felicity with the language. Big hint; being the first person to use scatology does not win you either the argument or admirers. It just marks you down as a person too stupid to come up with a clever insult.

Office phone numbers are not private information, and I've never seen them redacted in an FOIA. Why you would put a personal phone number in an official email is beyond me.

And no one's riding a moral high horse here. I'm just pointing out the phoniness of your outrage. Now you're all mad about journal copyright violations! Good grief, who do you think you're kidding?

Gerard,

Who are you defending?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Good grief, who do you think you're kidding?

No one. Hacking servers is a felony. I'm in the industry. I take it seriously.

That fact that you don't is and apparently don't believe that others might is telling.

Janet

We don't know who did this, so who is there to defend?

I'm pointing out the deflection -- people feigning outrage over the hacking, and let's face it, hacking is just a sad fact of modern life -- in order to distract attention from the deplorable content of some of the emails.

Now please don't call me a turdphile. I'll be hurt.

I'm pointing out the deflection -- people feigning outrage over the hacking, and let's face it, hacking is just a sad fact of modern life -- in order to distract attention from the deplorable content of some of the emails.

Yeah, and let's face it, murder, rape, burglary, auto theft, and other crimes are just a sad fact of modern life, and those who express outrage at such crimes are just ...

feigning it.

Right.

in order to distract attention from the deplorable content of some of the emails.

I've seen your misrepresentations of some of the e-mails elsewhere. I think you're feigning outrage over the content of the e-mail in order to distract attention from the fact that someone committed a felony by breaking in to this server and you and the rest of the denialsphere are caught out not simply defending the crime, but celebrating it.

Gerard Harbison,

Are you a turdphile? Your comments suggest you could be inclined to a bit of underhand smear. What is the "deplorable content" that you refer to?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

What is the "deplorable content" that you refer to?

There is some questionable stuff regarding FOIA requests by McIntyre.

However, we know that

1) UK law is different than US law

2) from past posts by McIntyre, it's obvious that the university's FOIA compliance office has been involved in the process, and for all we know Jones is just following requests from the office

3) McIntyre's been asking for data that CRU can not legally release (proprietary data from various NWS's around the world who in part fund themselves through the selling of this data), has raised a big stink about it to the praise and glory of the denialsphere, and that apparently this data's part of what was stolen

We'll see what shakes out of this.

The other "scandalous" stuff is a bunch of bullshit as far as I can determine.

Gerard

"I'm pointing out the deflection -- people feigning outrage over the hacking, and let's face it, hacking is just a sad fact of modern life -- in order to distract attention from the deplorable content of some of the emails."

Ok, so from this we can see that there isn;t actually anything deplorable. If all you can do is point at 'feigned outrage' then you have nothing. It seems you are simply trying to score rhetorical points here.

The person who made this information available may be employed at CRU, a whistleblower, which would make the person immune to prosecution.

Phil Jones however requesting others including himself to delete emails in the face of a Freedom Of Information request is a blatent felony.

The person who made this information available may be employed at CRU, a whistleblower, which would make the person immune to prosecution.

It's an external hack. The university is already working with police.

In the US, whistleblower legislation isn't a blanket protection allowing one to commit felonies, and I rather doubt it is in the UK, either.

Internal or not, release of this stuff is criminal, and I think it's just wonderful watching denialists cream themselves over how "noble" crime is as long as it serves their supposed needs.

If it is established that the release of these emails and datasets was felonious, regardless of the opportunity for the public to access them by FOI, is it then a crime to reproduce the same material on other servers? If so, does reproducing criminally-obtained information constitute a crime in countries where the original method of obtaining the information is not a crime?

And if these emails and datasets are available to the public under FOI, why did the Denialists not previously obtain them this way? Are the denialists now going to file en masse for the data and correspondence of all climatologists, simply because these are 'public' information?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

"dhogaza 126; Internal or not, release of this stuff is criminal, and I think it's just wonderful watching denialists cream themselves over how "noble" crime is as long as it serves their supposed needs."

Neither you or I us or them matter, its science being well served through transparency. The whistleblower/hacker deserves a Nobel Prize in economics.

Gerard Harbison, why do you only read denier web sites such as climatefraudit and whatswrongwithwatt? They are the only ones who confuse the Hadley Centre of the Met Office with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

I just checked your web page and you made this juvenile mistake. Are you really a professor at a University in the US? Must be one of the lesser known ones with very poor standards if they allow someone who never checks their facts to be employed there.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

>*Phil Jones however requesting others including himself to delete emails in the face of a Freedom Of Information request is a blatent felony.*

Ray, are you satisfied making this type of wild and damaging accusation without your full name? If I was prepared to accuse someone of a "a blatent felony" I'd come out from behind my sock puppet.

BTW which email are you relying of for this strong accusation? Lets see what evidence you rely on to makes this claim.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Gerard Harbison, like Anthony Cox, Lank and el gordo, all went away to do their home work when I ask them for some facts, or a basic statement of their charge.

They apparently knew that all of climate science was guilty of something. Now they just need to study long and hard and find some disjoint cherrys to match their preconceived notions.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet, wild and damaging accusations posted below in Phil Jones's own words, my name hardly matters eh.

From: Phil Jones
To: âMichael E. Mannâ
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. Heâs not in at the moment â minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I donât have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

Shorter Ray:

I read one single e-mail without context and I immediately conclude that there's a huge cover-up conspiracy! Also, cracking was an act of civil disobedience! After all, if Greenpeace and go around messing with stuff, why can't we?

However, if Greenpeace tries to crack into James Inhofe's private e-mails, that'll be a grievous crime against freedom and liberty!

* * *

Michael:

Thanks for the thumbs-up!

For all of the Denialati here who are in a lather over the revelations of a Global Conspiracy of Climate Scientists, I have two simple questions...

1) What exactly is the nefarious intent behind "Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series": what did Mann achieve by doing this, and what would have been shown had he not 'tricked' the world?

2) What exactly is the nefarious intent behind the "hiding" [sic] of the diverging post-1960 tree-ring data: what was achieved by doing this, and what would have been shown had the post-1960 data not been "hidden"?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Ray,

Your the one here accusing Jones of a "a blatent felony". So your name does count.

Unlike you Ray, I don't know:

* the context of this emai;

* the credibility of this particular email;

* what discussion went with it;

* the timing of any FOI;

* the timing of the campaigns of harassment against these people;
* the degree of harassment experienced;

* whether this request claimed to be made by Jones was real or carried out;
* and the legal implication of all of this.

So your the one who has jumped the gun without presenting all the information. No need to gather the facts hey Ray? Just something you read on the internet?

What is your name Ray? Jones is a real person, you just called him a criminal.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Actually. Janet, It's Friday night, and I went to have dinner with my wife. It's something called a life. I have one. I rather enjoy it.

Even so, you hurt my feelings.

To the rest of you; yeah, there's a lot of denial going on around here.

BJ:

2) What exactly is the nefarious intent behind the "hiding" [sic] of the diverging post-1960 tree-ring data: what was achieved by doing this, and what would have been shown had the post-1960 data not been "hidden"?

Easy - all the thermometers in the world what not have been fooled into thinking it's been getting warmer.

Graham Harbison:

It's Friday night, and I went to have dinner with my wife. It's something called a life. I have one. I rather enjoy it.

Well, that's not a luxury we have. No rest for the wicked and all that.

A world-wide conspircy of scientists and peer-reviewed science journals doesn't just concoct itself you know.

OK Gerard, come back when you've done your homework, to see if your can find anything to support your initial view.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

ahem.....all the thermometers in the world would not have been fooled into thinking it's been getting warmer.

"To the rest of you; yeah, there's a lot of denial going on around here" - says Gerard Harbison staring into mirror.

By Dappledwater (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Kevin Trenberth asked Michael Mann 'where did the heat go?'

Trying to explain observed surface cooling in terms of natural variability is no easy matter.

Mann: '...is there something going on here w/the energy and radiation budget which is inconsistent with the modes of internal variability that leads to similar temporary cooling periods within the models. I'm not sure this has been addressed...has it?'

14 October 2009

el gordo et al. seem stunned to discover that science mostly progresses in increments.

Can I ask all those of the warming persuasion here, do you still defend the "stick" as strongly as the "team"?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Bernard, J's post above, #134, is IMHO the best contribution to the debate so far.

Of course, you will never get McIntyre, Watts, et al, to answer these two simple questions (which are the crux of the matter).

By Dirk Hartog (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Gaz:

It is sloppy journalism, but the reporter's only partly at fault. Nor is it standard policy to say, did x if x is in the future compared to when the story runs, and even if it runs after the event, it's very phone-it-in, and normally you'd ask why the story, and if it's filler or just placating some interest.

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo, Steve McIntyre built his second career on the "Stick".It's always been more valuable to him than the climate research community.

I wouldn't focus on the taunts from the sociopaths and their dupes, but on the intent. The intent is to get an attack in to distort and recharacterize what was done.

Actually, this retroactive denial of an expectation of privacy that was reasonable, if people are going to discuss science at all outside presentation of papers, is despicable, beyond the pale, based on criminality, and in no way reasonable. Saying they should have followed the standards of the White House after the Americans passed a specific law mandating it, or the practices of a high-stakes business firm is insane nonsense.

Everything Watts did with weather stations did not pan out, but he kept on. Why? As I said at the start, the only purpose is harrassment. The same is true here - this is exactly why the Bush administration revealed the cover of a CIA agent and her agency front - harrassment, making an example, etc.

In the future, only highly politicized scientists vetted by the radical business/military culture will be allowed to operate. That's the goal. So, of course, the talking points project everything they're doing onto science.

Because, frankly, the key trait all the war-on-climate-science people share is projection. It's gone from Karl Rove science debate to Tonya Harding in short order.

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Chuckles

By Louis Hissink (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

Science is about explaining observations in terms of KNOWN scientific facts.

AGW has never been observed to require a theory.

You lot are stupid because you seem not to learn from personal physical experience.

By Louis Hissink (not verified) on 20 Nov 2009 #permalink

ouch. somebody on WuWt spoke the truth: listen to what crosspatch had to say:

crosspatch (18:48:38): What is being said on CA and WUWT are probably the least of their worries. They have a lot more to worry about in their own academic circles now with having a lot of the talk about their fellow academics exposed. What people were saying about whom behind their backs and what was being said about other institutions and various projects, etc. is going to do them a lot more long term career damage than anything we say here.

so we found no smoking gun. but the gossip that can be found in the e-mails will damage them anyway.

"sceptics" obviously are really nice persons.

Chuckles

again, sceptics exposing themselves. wonderful people.

so Louis, when will you publish your e-mails over the last 10 years?

Of course, the long game is to render publicly-funded science impossible (just as rendering *all* public funding is part of these people's long term policy).

Opening the scientists' e-mail is one big step on the way to achieving this. Intercepting snail mail and phone calls will be justified next.

Time to sell your Climate Ponzi Scheme stocks, warmoids

The UK right wing rag the Daily Telegraph has a story today expressing outrage at the fact that the story has effectively been ignored by most of the press, or treated as a story about hacking by a few. The reality is of course that there was remarkably little in the leaked emails and documents of any substance. The sense of disappointment on the denialist sites is increasingly palpable.

Of course the sad outcome of this will be that scientists will be much more guarded in what they say in emails to each other. Given the importance of open dialogue within the science community this is a retrograde step that will cost us all in the long run.

By GWB's nemesis (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

> Chuckles
> Posted by: Louis Hissink

As in "Chuckles The Clown"? Yup, can't disagree with you there.

Still trying to smoke out all the evil Marxists at the University of East Anglia? Checked under the bed for Fabians?

Fiendishly clever those Fabians. Before they made the stolen email files public they removed all of the traffic between them and CRU. If you look carefully at the wheels within wheels it's obvious this is all a plot to discredit the denialists!

The Fabians will stop at nothing in their campaign for one world government - if you don't believe me, just ask Louis.

GWB Nemisis
>The UK right wing rag the Daily Telegraph has a story today expressing outrage at the fact that the story has effectively been ignored by most of the press

Are you referring to the amateur James Delingpole?

Is he an official reporter?

GWBs "nemisis",
Time for a a new moniker dude, you'd be hard up to be the nemisis of the class clown at a sheltered workshop

'In late 2009, the credibility of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took a serious hit when email exchanges between some of its senior authors and editors revealed deliberate efforts to falsify data and silence dissenting scientists. The IPCC's reputation was already waning in the wake of scandals concerning Michael Mann's "hockey stick" temperature diagram and the role of government officials and environmental activists in its so-called "peer review" process. The IPCC Email Scandal of November 2009 meant the IPCC could no longer claim to represent the "scientific consensus" on global warming.'

swindled said "Wire tapping is legal to investigate a crime, so does hacking."

I think you'll find that wiretapping in most jurisdictions needs to be authorised by a magistrate (or equivalent) who has been granted the power to do so. I'm not sure of the legislation in the UK but in Australia unauthorised wiretaps can land you in prison for six months for each offense and cost you $60,000 a day for each tap.

However, I doubt that this would come under wiretap legislation. It depends on how the data was stolen of course, but I would think it more likely to be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act which can land you in prison for up to five years and an unspecified fine.

Regardless of how it was done I don't think there's any question that it was illegal.

By Philip Branch (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Mike Hulme is part of the click which has created this monstrous fudging. When he first started with CRU he came as a specialist 'in the construction of observed climatologies and in the validation of global climate models'.

Hulme was compromised from the get go. H.H.Lamb, the first director of CRU, will be turning in his grave.

swindled said "The people who released the CRU data...exposed that these were not just scientist, but activists with a political agenda to start an anti-industrial revolution."

Hmmm... From what I've seen all it's exposed is that the people at CRU hold you denialists in deep, deep contempt. If the most incriminating thing is that ten years ago a graph was put together so as not to highlight some dodgy tree-ring data then I think you are being a bit optimistic if you think that's evidence of some global conspiracy.

I suppose anything is grist to your rather peculiar mill, but really I would have thought you would be quite disappointed. No communication with the wicked Fabians, no instructions from would be communist overlords, no gloating about a world government... Starting to look like a bit of an own goal actually...

Well, well, well

Suddenly the believers are the denialists. If you don't think this is important and more than just a matter of 'legality' then you do not understand what has happened, A group of scientists have deliberately set out to manipulate data, hoodwink funding bodies and politicians, and put pressure on a scientific journal to remove its editor because they didn't like the papers it was publishing.

Oh and BTW, they also admit the GCMs did not predict the current temperature decline.(Hi Mark!)

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

put pressure on a scientific journal to remove its editor because they didn't like the papers it was publishing

So the only real different between them and your ilk is competence? How is this an argument in your favour?

Dave Andrews writes:

they also admit the GCMs did not predict the current temperature decline.

Well, fancy that, here's Dave using bold to demonstrate that he doesn't have a clue.

And could el gordo provide instructions on how to become part of a "click"? Sounds interesting.

Dave Andrews:
>A group of scientists have deliberately set out to manipulate data...

And the evidence is??
Out of over 100megs of data, one paragraph in thousands of emails!
WOW!

You impress me not.

"one paragraph in thousands of emails!"

What evidence Paul?

Some of the things that the Grand High Poobahs of the Church of Anthropogenic Warming write in emails when they think nobody will find out is very, very enlightening! Read this and weep, alarmists:

On the contrary, submitting to these "demands" undermines the wider scientific expectation of personal confidentiality . It is for this reason , and not because we have or have not got anything to hide, that I believe none of us should submit to these "requests".

The jig is up! The writing is on the wall! The cat is out of the bag! The kilt has been lifted! The dinner bell has been struck and the denialiti are slobbering as expected!

Michael

A 'click' develops naturally, when people of like minds get together. All these characters have known each for quite some time.

The story is gaining attention in the msm and the WUWT post on the CRU data hack was the number one post on Wordpress yesterday.

Fascinating.

Then what's a clique??

Dave Andrews said:

A group of scientists have deliberately set out to manipulate data, hoodwink funding bodies and politicians, and put pressure on a scientific journal to remove its editor because they didn't like the papers it was publishing.

Seems like DA has turned against McIntyre, the Pielkes, Spencer, Lindzen, Soon et al.

Now he will have twice as many people chasing after him and showing how dishonest, stupid, arrogant and nasty he is.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Michael

Hah, must be the heat - definite brain fade. My apologies to everyone who may have been offended by my four letter word.

Before you get excited, Michael. We all know click has five letters.

Darn this global warming heat.

put pressure on a scientific journal to remove its editor because they didn't like the papers it was publishing.

In early 2008 it was discovered that a couple of creationists had gotten an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Proteomics. Members of the scientific community called for an explanation and put pressure on the editor to retract the article. Several expressed the view that Proteomics should no longer be considered a respectable journal due to its failure to weed out creationist papers.

Clearly this is appalling behaviour on the part of the EVILutionists and demonstrates a conspiracy to keep skeptical views out of the literature!

There are obviously scientific conspiracies EVERYWHERE.

On a more serious note - I wonder if this isn't going to be bad even for the denialists. They've now made the entire scientific community aware of the tactics they're willing to use. What they've managed to find this time is hardly scandalous (I'd be pretty surprised if my own correspondence came off so well under this kind of attack), and due to the chilling effect this will have on open discussion between colleagues, any future stuff they dig up will be even more anodyne.

I note that there seems to have been no responses to my [post yesterday](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…) that answer my questions about what scientific fraud it is exactly that has been perpetrated.

I note too that Anthony Watts [attempts to answer such a question](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/) himself, by mirroring Climate Audit (which I haven't so far been able to see), but he seems oblivious to the mathematical nonsense that 'Jean S' produced as a result. Jean S' answer is to omit the last several decades of instrumental data (which do not suffer from the 'divergence problem') to show that a smoothed line "point[s] downwards"...

So Mannâs solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UCâs figure (violet original, green without âMikeâs Nature trickâ).

All well and good, but we know from an amazing invention - the thermometer, of which there are hundreds of millions around the world - that temperatures actually have been increasing since the 1960s, and not decreasing. Jean S/Watts seem to be ignoring the fact that the divergence is a recognised systematic bias, and that the addition of acknowledged correct data in order to extend a recognised, smoothed trend is not hocus-pocus - and anyone who read and understood the original methodology would have known this.

In fact, Jean S/Watts could have made the same spurious analysis years earlier without any reading of the stolen emails, if they had bothered to actually read and understand the original methodology - as others have pointed out, it is not as if the data were actually 'hidden'. The fact that they did not, and could not, do so indicates to me that they have no familiarity with the valid processes employed to reproduce faithfully the temperature trend over the last thousand years - even if such requires a composite approach.

Jean S/Watts are playing cute (at the least) with a problem of smoothing that often occurs at the termini of data-series, a la [Jon Jenkins and the abuse of high-order polynomials](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_…). Their strategy might remove the last several decades of warming from a graph, but this does not remove this warming from the 20th century record, nor from the continuous temperature record over the more than the last century and a half. And it does not remove the blade from the hockeystick - no matter how they might wish it otherwise.

If Jean S/Watts are trying to imput that there is no warming trend since the Industrial Revolution, but rather, there is but a simple collection of peaks and troughs in 'normal' temperature noise, then they need to go about carefully explaining why such huge variations in temperature are not recorded in the geophysical, the biological, and the anthropological records over the last several millenia. From a purely biological perspective I can say that the rate of contemporary temperature change is not reflected in the phenological, physiological, distributional, genetic, and other biological-parameter records for the period spanning last several centuries to the last several millenia - or more.

Of course, it might be that biologists have "hidden" the evidence that would actually refute the rather large body of literature that actually shows that warming has impacted on so many biological parameters. Good luck finding that conspiracy Anthony, Jean S, Steve, and co...

If there is anything hidden at all, it is the evidence that Watts and his Denialati compadres actually have a clue about the science, and how it is (validly) conducted.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Lernard Bernard,

"the rather large body of literature that actually shows that warming has impacted on so many biological parameters."

That would be those mountain pygmy possums and lemuroids, no doubt.
Could it run to polar bears too, do you think?

CON artist,
Don't even know that hockey stick now?
How the mighty have fallen.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Illegally hacking files and then finding nothing is kind the desperation play when you know you got nothing.

If the bozos wanted to ... like ... disprove the fact of anthropogenic climate change they could always gather the requisite evidence, publish it in a peer-reviewed journal and collect their Nobel Prize.

[crickets]

A group of scientists have deliberately set out to manipulate data, hoodwink funding bodies and politicians...<?i>
Dave Andrews @ 168

Publicly name these individual scientists whom you so boldly claim are avaricious frauds. Presumably, being the reasonable rational person that you are, you would not make that claim without very good evidence that you have complete confidence in.

Put your money and (what is left of your) reputation where your mouth is. Or be prepared to be justifiably dismissed as a libellous scumbag, full of arrogance and bad manners, and devoid of any scientific or ethical credibility at all.

Er, my last post seemed to have been prematurely terminated. Try again.

A group of scientists have deliberately set out to manipulate data, hoodwink funding bodies and politicians...

Publicly name these individual scientists whom you so boldly claim are avaricious frauds, and let your 'evidence' be tested in a proper court, in defamation proceedings.

Put up. Or be prepared to be justifiably called a libellous scumbag, devoid of any scientific and ethical credibility at all.

That's rather a lot of tripe BJ; the proxies don't have to have smoothing problems at their termini because there is sufficient overlap of samples, if one can avoid Briffa like cherry-picking, to avoid termini; the proxies were dropped after 1960 because they wouldn't play ball and the issue with that is, if the proxies are sufficient for pre-1960 temperature conclusions why aren't they good enough for the post-1960 temperature conclusions?

Noone is denying that there has been a temperature increase since about 1850; solar and PDO explain that. As for this extraordinary statement:

"why such huge variations in temperature are not recorded in the geophysical, the biological, and the anthropological records over the last several millenia. From a purely biological perspective I can say that the rate of contemporary temperature change is not reflected in the phenological, physiological, distributional, genetic, and other biological-parameter records for the period spanning last several centuries to the last several millenia - or more."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4449527.ece

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/

Cohenite - you just burped up a load of tripe right there - solar can't explain the last 30 years of warming, and the PDO doesn't contribute to long term trends.

>*if the proxies are sufficient for pre-1960 temperature conclusions why aren't they good enough for the post-1960 temperature conclusions?*

Because humans have disrupted the environment in multiple ways? In ways which increased terrifically post WWII(Global dimming, CO2 concentrations, other pollutions, biodiversity loss, ecosystem impoverishment.) Perhaps this affect proxies at the same time temperature affect proxies?

Just my speculation mind you. Any one else know the answer? Perhaps there are papers on such things? Perhaps competent scientist know of these? Have you surveyed the literature Anthony?

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Anthony, you still haven't done your homework have you?

What is it now, 4 months??

>*The idea that the PDO cycle is trend neutral has been subject to reasonable critique*

Which Anthony Cohenite Cox demonstrates by linking to two papers about ENSO.

I love it when Cox tries to talk all sciency.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 21 Nov 2009 #permalink

Me too Janet. Reading Cohenite's really cool, sexy sciency stuff makes me want to be a scientist like him.

There you Coxy, your google does work!

It just would have sounded so much smoother if you had used a PDO paper first up when you talked so sciency.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Coxy, now please explain for non sciency people like me, where does this last paper critique *"the idea that the PDO cycle is trend neutral"* and what were the author's conclusion about that that critique?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet,

It would just thrill me to be able to explain sciency things like Cohenite. The sexy language makes me..... feel....so...... empowered and adequate.

I never knew that rational thought began and ended with pasting urls or large chunks as answers to problems and questions. I had always thought you had to explain your ideas and back them up right up to the data and physical explanations and then answer people questions people put to you without resorting to pasting.

Cohenite.

Sometimes I wonder if you ever put your brain into gear before you engage your mouth.

Read my previous post carefully. You'll find that my remark about the divergence problem of the proxies is a different matter to the use of a smoothing process to illustrate the temperature trend â as indeed anyone who actually interprets the reconstruction and the curve-fitting should understand.

Do not pass go; do not collect one hundred dollars.

And with respect to your two links as a response to my "extraordinary" statement... Whatever else you believe that they might imply, you need to understand that it is trivially obvious that past cold (and warm) events have occurred: that they occurred at planetary scales rather than regional scales, and at rates of change and of magnitudes of change similar to that set in train by anthropogenic emissions is another thing entirely, and one that you might have rather a more difficult time accumulating evidence for - assuming of course that you knew how to do so in the first place.

You're still thinking like a divorce lawyer on an ideological mission to present a personally-favoured scenario, rather than the most parsimonious and scientifically supported inference.

Go straight to jail.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo.

That would be those mountain pygmy possums and lemuroids, no doubt. Could it run to polar bears too, do you think?

If that's the limit of material to which you are able to refer, you need to do quite a bit more reading.

Why, oh why is it that these Denialists are all so bonsai-ed in their scientific exposure?!

Trying to induce them to actually employ some scientific technique to their learning really is like trying to wring blood from a stone - the only difference is that one may eventually squeeze out some blood...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Bernard old chap,
Get real for once in your life!
99.9% of the impacts on those biological parameters is due to habitat loss and other factors.
Anything at all that is claimed to be attributable to AGW and more specifically ACO2e is absolute guesswork.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Another evidence free comment from Drongo.

How did you calculate the 99.9% figure Drongo? Or did you (as seems too usual for denialist) substitute your gut feeling for facts, and just make something up?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet,

Please prove me wrong.
I know Bernard can't.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo,

I'll take that as confirmation that you just made that stuff up (a trait common to your ilk). Prove me wrong. Alternatively go and put your pants out before you get burnt.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Wow! Janet,

Your evidence really is overwhelming!

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Bernard,

Do you think Drongo is Tim Curtin?

I remember that "prove me wrong" shtick regarding Arrhenius and Malthsand , and his familiarity with Bernard is leads me to that inclination. Plus the made up BS is a constant.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo, it appears that I was correct, and someone has just pulled your pants down for you.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo.

It seems that you don't know anything. Start [counting](http://tiny.cc/eCkql).

Oh, and newsflash... I and the rest of the world's ecologists actually [understand the relative contributions of various ecological stressors](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/06/the_denial_industrial_complex.p…), and you will find that such is taken into account in most analyses. Your statement that:

99.9% of the impacts on those biological parameters is due to habitat loss and other factors.

is a strawman, because when ecologists speak of global warming impacts they are referring to the changes arising from, in addition to, or synergistic with, the other causes of ecological damage.

Still, as you seem to know better, and as you obviously have no access to Current Contents, Biological Abstracts, or similar, use the Google Scholar trawl above and show where you are right and the ecologists of the world are wrong. As you seem to think that only one in a thousand of the "impacts on those biological parameters" is due to climate change, I reckon that an annotated bibliography of, say, ten thousand of the "about 177,000" references related to the impacts of climate change just on 'phenology' should do it in terms of statistical reliability.

Of course, there will be doublings up within the search list, in terms of references that cover the same examples, or which are links to the same papers, or which are reviews of other papers, so your refuation might have to cover somewhat more than ten thousand items. You're going to be a busy boy wading through so many references in order to disprove that climate change does not have numerous examples of impact upon phenology.

Oh, and once you've finished that, we can then test for research that looks at the impact of climate change on ecophysiology, on distribution, and any number of other of those the biological parameters of which you are so dismissive.

Hop to it Drongo. I'm not going to do your hard yards for you, but I'm happy to help you figure out where you're going wrong. Of course, such an endeavour is no different to attempting to shoot fish in a barrel, so it's not exactly a strain on my part.

Perhaps you can use [cohenite's "trick"](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1669230) and ask some of the folk at Marohasy's, or at another pseudoscientific cesspit, to help you in your task.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Mark,

I said proof!

These guys are the simply the fiddlers we are talking about.

D'you seriously think that with the slight current warming that is less than we experienced in the last millenia that species can't cope?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Just to be clear Drongo, what are you accusing each of these authors of when you state:

>*These guys are the simply the fiddlers we are talking about.*

BTW, best [evidence suggest](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html) we are already warmer than any period in the last millennium. And were are out a radiative balance, with approximately a further 0.6 degress to be expressed to due to current greenhouse forcing.

But nice little Gish Gallop.

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo tries to cover himself with:

>"I said proof!"

I would have thought overwhelming evidence would have been sufficient, especially considering the evidence is counter something you just made up!

Drongo (Tim Curtin?), can you provide me with proof that your not a fraud?

I think you are a fraud, I think 99.9% of people reading your BS here will conclude you are a fraud. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what you say is total BS. Prove me wrong.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

D'you seriously think that with the slight current warming that is less than we experienced in the last millenia that species can't cope?

Yes.

Take Tasmania's kelp forests as an example, seeing that you serendipitously refer to "the... current". The warmer ocean currents that have been sweeping Tasmania's east coast for a number of years now made it much more conducive for non-indigenous sea urchins to establish. These sea urchins are hammering the kelp, and are placing the forests at significant risk. This in turn places at risk the benthic organisms that rely on the kelp, and even some of the non-benthic species are threatened, as they have nowhere else to where they can migrate.

It matters not whether the warm currents are presently directly a consequence of human-induced climate change, or not. If the warmth is not presently directly attributable to AGW, it soon will be, and it will only require a permanent increase of a few degrees to completely alter the Tasmanian sub-littoral ecology, and to wipe out many species in the process.

As to whether "the slight current warming that is less than we experienced in the last millenia", I really would like to see you demonstrate that there have been other global warming events over the last 1000 years, of the rate and magnitude that is occurring now. Such an idea is inconsistent with the distribution, and indeed with the very existence, of many species even if they haven't been significantly impacted by human activity - but hey, if you can explain that away, go for it.

So, to repeat, I do think that the present warming is a threat to species, and the Tasmanian kelp example is but one. There are countless others, but you seem incapable of finding out for yourself what they are.

As you are an Australian, you might ask a mountain pygmy possum what they would think of a decade or two of sustained warmth over their winter hibernation range. Or consider the impact that a slight warming will have on the fire frequency in eastern seaboard sclerophyll forests, and how this in turn threatens the Gondwanan nothofagus remnants sitting atop the highest peaks of the Great Dividing Range.

I could list many further examples, but I despise the intellectual laziness - and indeed the intellectual dishonesty - that underpins the refusal of those, such as yourself, who can't do their own fact-finding.

So get off your arse and find out for yourself why the bilge that you spray is exactly that. And if you insist on maintaining your current claims, then start providing the evidence that proves all of the accepted ecological work wrong.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Oh Mark,

And to think I used to think you were smart...

Did you check with C.O.N. to see if that was the right stick?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Drongo,

You've provide zero evidence that you have "smart[s]" you seek in others. Instead this threat provide multiple evidence of the opposite of this quality in your posts.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 22 Nov 2009 #permalink

Chris O'Neill, #219

Are you for real? Mann's hockey stick was plastered all over the TAR, all over the media, all over popular books about AGW (as it was then called) and all over Gore's film. Why are you trying to airbrush so much out of recent history?

Moreover, the Wegman report clearly showed that most prominent climate scientists worked in a symbiotic relationship with one another. No one ever tried to reproduce Mann's results they just accepted it as 'truth' for their own papers.

These papers were then used as the basis for AR4. So they fall a long way short of "standing up to scrutiny"

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 23 Nov 2009 #permalink

Dave Andrews still believes Wegman is an honest and competent statistician. He has shown himself to be neither. He is a card carrying member of the AGW denier cabal.

Check out the letter he signed (along with many other AGW deniers) supporting statistics which would have had a red pencil drawn through it if had been handed in by any high school or first year college student.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 23 Nov 2009 #permalink

For years I have watched the environmental community malign reality, exagerate, cheat, and proclaim doom, its refreshing to see them get caught at this obscene game in such a monumental fashion.

Dave Andrews:

Mann's hockey stick was plastered all over the TAR,

So you're saying drongo meant Mann's original, 1998/9 hockey stick. In that case I'm not defending all the methods in MBH98/99 but that is irrelevant because hockeysticks made now such as most of the hockeysticks in AR4 are made with provably correct methods.

Why are you trying to airbrush so much out of recent history?

I could ask you the same question. Why are you trying to airbrush the hockey sticks in AR4 (which ARE recent history) out of history?

No one ever tried to reproduce Mann's results they just accepted it as 'truth' for their own papers. These papers were then used as the basis for AR4.

Utter crap. The other hockey sticks in AR4 are not produced using Mann's MBH98 methods.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 23 Nov 2009 #permalink

Chris O'Neill,

"provably correct methods."

Oh, come on, how are they 'provably correct'?

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 24 Nov 2009 #permalink

how are they 'provably correct'?

Regularized expectation maximization is provably correct as opposed to say, uncentered principal components analysis.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 24 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet Akerman:

Do you think Drongo is Tim Curtin?

Good question. Let's see:

Hey Spangled Drongo, what's the difference between a first derivative and a proportional rate of change?

*Snicker*

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

You boys 'n girls sure have fun making fun of people..., bowing to the evidence of recent warming..., and the computer simulations built on non-physical parameterizations.

There's plenty of reason for more caution than you're exhibiting.

At the very least, why forget so easily that IPCC scientists felt most climate change topics were worthy of worst-possible level of scientific uncertainty? (LOSU)?

Even more interesting to me as a matter of evidential curiosity: why do we ignore the fact that treelines were much higher/northern/etc in the last millenium? That's pretty strong evidence for significantly different climate, that ecosystems managed to handle OK.

Ah well, it was fun stopping by to see your continued flame-comments.

Happy New Year, all.

Even more interesting to me as a matter of evidential curiosity: why do we ignore the fact that treelines were much higher/northern/etc in the last millenium? That's pretty strong evidence for significantly different climate, that ecosystems managed to handle OK.

1. Rate of change is significant.

2. Treelines aren't ecosystems, and the fact that they move north/higher tells us nothing about the ecosystem response as a whole.

3. We're seeing ecosystem responses at a rate now that worry biologists. We're seeing a collapse of woodland bird species in the Netherlands, for instance, which appears to be due to the loss of synchronicity between insect hatch dates and migration/nesting timing. We're seeing this kind of disruption over much of the northern hemisphere, though the dutch study is the first/only one of its kind thus far that I'm aware of.

MrPete,

Tree lines have been retreating since the Holocene Optimum. So what?

All the parameterizations of models are empirically bound approximations of known physical processes, and the models aren't built on them.

By luminous beauty (not verified) on 03 Jan 2010 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo: the hydrology has certainly changed, but so has the climate. Even puddles rarely freeze in southern England these days. Certainly they don't remain frozen for weeks.

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 18 Nov 2009 #permalink