Climategate II

[rushmc 23]

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Ah yes, I'm sure America's conservatives will go down in history as the copernicus of our time.

Maybe

But these recently released emails tell us who works the hardest at manipulating the system when it comes to AGW.

you can pick the ones you want to read


http://junkscience.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0-is-here/

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

Your last post here referenced policy

I found this kind of tied to what you were saying

One of the emails just released

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From the Climategate 2.0 collection, New York Times “reporter” Andy Revkin proves his activist bent:

Hi all,

I’d greatly appreciate your input (under Nature embargo rules, meaning no public discussion til Weds afternoon) on the attached paper (news/views attached as well) forecasting a
north atlantic-driven cool spell for next decade or so based on a new approach to ocean modeling.

this has significance in policy arena, of course, if people don’t appreciate that inevitable wiggles from climate variability can muddy trends. If they don’t, then efforts to paint human-pushed warming as an ‘urgent’ imperative can be undercut. (this all presumes you think this is solid model and forecast…)…

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[lawrocket 3]

edited to add: where the hell did all that stuff in there come from???

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Global temp. rise, sea level rise, floods, tornadoes, tropical diseases, glacier melting, ocean acidification, coral reef die-off, wildfires, and all of the other Chicken Little predictions have all been proven to be wrong.

I have a problem with this statement. They haven’t all been proven wrong.

Global temperatures have risen in the last 150 years. Some, like me, merely argue that they are returning after a dip called the “Little Ice Age.”

Floods have increased in the amount of damage that they cause. Some, like me, argue that this has to do with people building in places where floods have existed, and when levies and dikes break, floods merely go where they would have been without human attempts to intervene.

Sea level rise? Yeah. It’s seen in some places and in other places sea levels have dropped. We don’t hear about those, though… regardless, sea level rise isn’t occurring anywhere NEAR the pace that has been predicted over he last twenty-five years.

Tornadoes? Yep. A lot more tornadoes are being detected. There was a big jump in reported tornadoes in the 1970’s, right when weather radar systems were being deployed. And yet another jump occurred with the deployment of Doppler radar systems in the 1980’s and 1990’s. We’re far better at detecting them now.

Tropical diseases? Yeah, more people are dying of them because there are more people. Unknown is that malaria was a problem in the US even in the early 1900’s.

Glaciers melting? Yeah. Plenty of temperate glaciers are ablating, and have been since the end of the last ice age. I have little doubt that the trend will continue. However, the largest ice masses on earth (Greenland and Antarctica) are in stasis.

Ocean acidification? Yeah. I could see how acidification can occur and how it has occurred by CO2 mixing with the ocean water. I haven’t looked much into it, though, so I’m not offering any take on the subject.

Coral Reefs? Along with polar bears they are favorite topics. Coral reefs do bleach. The El Nino of 1998 was estimated to have cause bleaching of 15% of the coral biomass. The problem, though, is that coral reefs STILL have a habit of generating. Research into places like Tuvalu (which is widely ballied about as the victim of rising oceans) show that coral has a tendency to grow up as water levels rise and die if water levels fall. Meanwhile, the people studying coral put on sunscreen, go take a look, and the sunscreen activates viruses in symbiotic algae, killing the algae and bleaching the coral. Yes, it’s been shown that people are actually studying coral to death.

Wildfires? Yeah – they are plenty bigger now than they have been over the last century. Part of that comes from policies of the past to put them out BEFORE they became huge. This led to things like a century of fuel buildup, coupled with a policy to let them burn and only protect human structures based in part on our realization that fires are a healthy part of the cycle of forests. Add to that that people are moving more often into places where wildfires have been and we have a good idea of why wildfires are bigger. Frequent? Yeah – nowadays we in the US can read about wildfires in Australia as they happen and see live footage. We read about and see them more frequently.

I don’t think outright denial is useful. Saying it isn’t happening is no better than being Chicken Little. Both sides are lost because facts lose out to rhetoric.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[lawrocket 3]

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Your last post here referenced policy

I found this kind of tied to what you were saying

One of the emails just released

Quote

From the Climategate 2.0 collection, New York Times “reporter” Andy Revkin proves his activist bent:

Hi all,

I’d greatly appreciate your input (under Nature embargo rules, meaning no public discussion til Weds afternoon) on the attached paper (news/views attached as well) forecasting a
north atlantic-driven cool spell for next decade or so based on a new approach to ocean modeling.

this has significance in policy arena, of course, if people don’t appreciate that inevitable wiggles from climate variability can muddy trends. If they don’t, then efforts to paint human-pushed warming as an ‘urgent’ imperative can be undercut. (this all presumes you think this is solid model and forecast…)…

Well, yes. Policy is at the heart of the discussions. Policy is what defines the winners and losers. But science is proving to be an adjunct to policy in the AGW arena.

A few weeks ago, I saw the movie “Kinsey.” It was quite interesting about a guy who performed a groundbreaking study of male sexual practices. It made huge press, was massively influential, and became very well known. He followed with one on females. Then he moved from famous and popular to unpopular as he began making political statements and advocating.

I saw a number of similarities with AGW. When scientists become activists. Scientists are out there trying to define policy. Eisenhower’s famed “military-industrial complex” speech had other portions to it. Shortly after he spoke those famed words, he had something else to say:

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Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

Ike put it into words in January, 1961. Climate policy is climate science. Rounds one and two of the e-mails, to me, demonstrate the desire of the scientific technological elite of climate science to be the sole authorities of policy decisions. And stomp out dissent.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kelpdiver 2]

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To which I pointed out a vehicle called a plug in hybrid. A car that can run on gas or electricity. How did I misunderstand you query?

The Chevy Volt that goes 30 miles on a full charge? (which takes much longer than a gas station stop). The one that just failed a bunch of crash tests?

[billvon 3,132]

>The one that just failed a bunch of crash tests?

It actually passed the crash tests - the first fire happened something like a week later. The NTSB is trying to figure out how to change their testing methodologies to account for the (relatively) high energy packs that cars like the Volt use.

[rushmc 23]

And stomp out dissent.

[brenthutch 444]

Now GM is buying back Volts, because of the reliability issues. Again I ask; what part of your question did I miss?

[brenthutch 444]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/APNewsBreak-GM-willing-buy-apf-991274469.html?x=0

link

[brenthutch 444]

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It seems as though there would be a level playing field between these billions of dollars and research grants, and the billions of dollars in exxon mobile profits.

If all of those supposed profits were bankrolling skeptic research, you might have a point.

Since it's not....well.

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Its a bit strange that 97% of scientists globally would be fabricating the greatest scientific lie of all time because they wanted research grant money, rather than money from the oil and coal industry.

AGW Research funding: ~80 billion
Exxon mobile funding: 23 million

YOU do the math.

so do you think all climate scientists are just bankrolling tons of cash and ballin' out with tons of hookers and blow every night?
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you probably don't work in any scientific industry

This is all you need to know.

http://climategate.tv/2011/11/30/marc-morano-exclusive-interview-on-climategate-2-0-and-the-durban-climate-conference/

[brenthutch 444]

I know I said that I was going to play nice, and I will; but how does quoting someones own words constitute a PA? I am not being a jerk (now) but I would like to know what the constraints are.

[billvon 3,132]

>but how does quoting someones own words constitute a PA?

It's not. It's trolling, which is inflammatory material that has nothing to do with the topic, and is posted specifically to piss someone off. (And posting someone else's troll and saying "but it's not my words!" doesn't get around that.)

[brenthutch 444]

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>but how does quoting someones own words constitute a PA?

It's not. It's trolling, which is inflammatory material that has nothing to do with the topic, and is posted specifically to piss someone off. (And posting someone else's troll and saying "but it's not my words!" doesn't get around that.)

I understand, there is a fine line between clever and cruel; I will try to abide. My comments we meant to be more illustrative than inflammatory.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Now GM is buying back Volts, because of the reliability issues. Again I ask; what part of your question did I miss?

uh, first you trumpet the Volt as proof that you already have a choice of gas or electricity at the pump (even though you don't with the Volt), and now you're criticizing it as a burning hulk of junk.

Pick a side.

[brenthutch 444]

I did not "trumpet" the volt. I only pointed it out as a plug in hybrid that takes both gas and electric.

[brenthutch 444]

The argument is also a strawman, since all but the most basic climate models use a greybody model that accounts for deviations from idea blackbody behavior.

The problem is that all of the initial chicken little; " the global warming" predictions, are based on black body equations. The new and more sophisticated grey body models do not show the same impact of CO2 on the climate.

[skiskyrock 0]

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The argument is also a strawman, since all but the most basic climate models use a greybody model that accounts for deviations from idea blackbody behavior.

The problem is that all of the initial chicken little; " the global warming" predictions, are based on black body equations. The new and more sophisticated grey body models do not show the same impact of CO2 on the climate.

Detailed greybody corrections for the radiation balance in the atmosphere were worked out by Simpson over 80 years ago.

[brenthutch 444]

I am not saying that wildfires and coral bleaching do not occur, I am saying that the causes have been those other than global warming.

[ShcShc11 0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qeRaBaPRmk&feature=related

About Oil.
Summarized very well.
Its not that we will run out of oil; but we are running out of CHEAP oil.

[brenthutch 444]

He has a few good points, (many of which I brought up a few YEARS ago). One glaring shortcoming is that he failed to adequately address the impact of technical advancements. For example, it was not but a few years ago that the "experts" were wringing their hand over the shortage of domestic natural gas supplied. http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/its-all-our-fault-natural-gas-running-out-in-eight-years.html
The smartest guys in the room, now look like idiots. The same applies to his prognostications. Like Yogi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
I would venture to guess that the same will apply to many of his guesses.

[Plover 0]

Right on!