UH OH: Global Warming Scientist at CRU steps down

[fossten]

Pending investigation of his falsifying of global temperature data.

 

[MonsterMark]

He stepped aside, not down. Big difference.

He gets to keep his job and as soon as the winds (independent, ya right, investigation) die down, he'll be back at his old post doing the same thing. Only difference will be all conniving will be either done in person or on the phone so as to not leave a paper trail. Isn't that peachy.

 

[fossten]

**BREAKING**Drudge is reporting that Penn State University is going to investigate Michael Mann.

Michael E. Mann (born 28 December 1965) is an American climatologist, and author of more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications. He has attained public prominence as lead author of a number of articles on paleoclimate and as one of the originators of a graph of temperature trends dubbed the “hockey stick graph” for the shape of the graph. The graph received both praise and criticism after its publication in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

In August 2005 he was appointed Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University, in the Department of Meteorology and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and Director of the university’s interdepartmental Earth System Science Center. He previously taught at the University of Virginia, in the Department of Environmental Sciences (1999 – 2005).

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112503608.html?nav=emailpage

Tell it to the ice caps

An e-mail storm worsens the climate for consensus

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 27, 2009

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate-change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting.

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real -- a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there's much about the climate they still don't know.

Here's what happened: Someone hacked into the servers at one of the leading academic centers in the field -- the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England -- and filched a trove of e-mails and documents, which have been posted on numerous Web sites maintained by climate-change skeptics.

Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, released a statement Wednesday saying, "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published e-mails do not read well." That would be an example of British understatement.

In one message sent to a long list of colleagues, Jones speaks of having completed a "trick" with recent temperature data to "hide the decline." The word "trick" is hardly a smoking gun -- scientists use it to refer to clever but perfectly legitimate ways of handling data. But the "hide the decline" part refers to a real issue among climate researchers called the "divergence problem."

To plot temperatures going back hundreds or thousands of years -- long before anyone was taking measurements -- you need a set of data that can serve as an accurate proxy. The width of tree rings was found to correlate well with temperature readings, and extrapolating that correlation into the past yields the familiar "hockey stick" graph -- fairly level temperatures for eons, followed by a sharp incline beginning around 1900. This is attributed to human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting increase in heat-trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But beginning around 1960, tree-ring data diverge from observed temperatures. Skeptics say this calls into question whether tree-ring data are valid for earlier periods on the flat portion of the hockey stick -- say, 500 or 1,000 years ago. Jones and others acknowledge they don't know what the divergence means, but they point to actual temperatures: It's warmer now than it was 100 years ago.

Another e-mail -- from Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. -- is even more heartening to the skeptics. Trenberth wrote last month of the unusually cool autumn that Colorado was experiencing, and went on: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

He appears to be conceding skeptics' claim that over the past decade there has been no observed warming. In truth, though, that wouldn't be much of a concession. At issue is the long-term trend, and one would expect anomalous blips from time to time.

From my reading, the most damning e-mails are those in which scientists seem to be trying to squelch dissent from climate-change orthodoxy -- threatening to withhold papers from journals if they publish the work of naysayers, vowing to keep skeptical research out of the official U.N.-sponsored report on climate change.

In his statement, Jones noted that the e-mail hack occurred just days before the climate summit in Copenhagen. "This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change," he said. There's that understatement again.

The fact is that climate science is fiendishly hard because of the enormous number of variables that interact in ways no one fully understands. Scientists should welcome contrarian views from respected colleagues, not try to squelch them. They should admit what they don't know.

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced one another, but so far they haven't gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

It good that this little furor over these emails will weed-out the less ethical of the scientists, fudging data is never acceptable. However, this is NOT proof that global warming is not occuring.

 

[MonsterMark]

Johnny likes graphs.
Lots of data points.

 

[fossten]

Some people are true believers in AGW to the point where it's a religion. No matter what evidence they see, they won't accept it.

 

[shagdrum]

It good that this little furor over these emails will weed-out the less ethical of the scientists, fudging data is never acceptable. However, this is NOT proof that global warming is not occurring.

"The argument from ignorance, also known as...negative evidence, is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or is false only because it has not been proven true."

This is proof that the "evidence" of AGW is fraudulent (that means false, Johnny). To try and irrationally deflect the burden of proof to disproving a claim that is based in fraud is dishonest.

Some people are true believers in AGW to the point where it's a religion. No matter what evidence they see, they won't accept it.

it is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion
-Edmund Burke

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
-George Bernard Shaw

So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in feelings, it gains rather then loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded are it's adherents that their feelings must have some deeper ground which the argument does not reach.
-John Stuart Mill

 

[MonsterMark]

Quote of the Year from O-Bow-Ma
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting “science” above “politics” when lifting the ban on government-funded human embryonic stem cell research. “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry,” he said during the signing ceremony. “It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As he stomps off to Copenhagen to lay bare the United States to the fraud that is the global warming argument.

Everything that President Obama says.... take it to mean the exact opposite.

 

[fossten]

Obama is like any liberal - double standards are okay as long as they use them.

 

[hrmwrm]

Some people are true believers in AGW to the point where it's a religion. No matter what evidence they see, they won't accept it.

quite the statement coming from you.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Johnny likes graphs.
Lots of data points.

Nice graphs. Unfortunately for you they do nothing to dispute the evidence of GW and in fact support it.

Do YOU know what they mean and what they are telling us? I'm curious about how you would interpret that data. Be careful though, now that you've put this noose around your neck you don't want to step off the chair. Or DO you?

 

[shagdrum]

Unfortunately for you they do nothing to dispute the evidence of GW and in fact support it.

I repeat:

"The argument from ignorance, also known as...negative evidence, is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or is false only because it has not been proven true."


You are still spamming your fallacious argument...

The emails themselves show the evidence that anthropogenic global warming theory (that means man-made global warming, Johnny) is fraudulent. Moving it to simply "global warming" is misdirection on your part (assuming you are smart enough to grasp the difference between the two), or simply sloppiness.

"The inability to tolerate dissent has unfortunately destroyed the credibility of climate change science and I don’t know how it’s going to come back"
- Patrick Michaels

 

[fossten]

Johnny forgets that we have global warming every summer. It just hits different regions at different times.

The actual avg temp of the earth has actually cooled in the last 10 years. Hence the term, "Hide the decline."

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

You are still spamming your fallacious argument...

The emails themselves show the evidence that anthropogenic global warming theory (that means man-made global warming, Johnny) is fraudulent. Moving it to simply "global warming" is misdirection on your part (assuming you are smart enough to grasp the difference between the two), or simply sloppiness.

Shag, pull your head out of your a$$ and stop the distraction with your pretzel logic. It only makes you look petty and foolish, and we don't need more proof of that. The title of this thread is “UH OH: Global Warming Scientist at CRU steps down”. Additionally, the data that is shown in the graphs Bryan posted have nothing to do w/ AGW, this is POLAR ICE CAP DATA (i.e.: evidence of GW). For this to be an issue or topic of AGW, we’d have to be discussing fossil fuels and greenhouse gas data and it’s correlation to temperature data or ice caps, not merely ice caps & temperature data. Therefore it is YOU who are misdirecting this discussion from GW to AGW. Try to stay on topic, son.

Additionally, not one shred of evidence has been found in these emails that proves that the data being analyzed by the CRU had indeed been falsified AND used to mislead the larger GW/AGW science community. All that has been revealed by these emails is that the CRU scientists involved, during the course of internal peer reviews which are designed to be self-critical, have had active discussions and debates regarding the veracity of the data and how it is analyzed & processed to draw conclusions, as well as challenging those conclusions. Certainly, some of the discussion that transpired in the emails calls into question the validity of that analysis and processing of the data. But to claim the emails alone prove the data to be fraudulent and AGW a figment of our imagination is jumping the shark. You need to see the raw data, you need to know what the “trick” process was that was supposedly applied to that data, you need to know if in fact that “trick” process WAS indeed applied to the data that was then used to draw conclusions about GW/AGW, and finally you need to know that those so-called “fraudulent” conclusions are indeed different than conclusions drawn had the data not been “tricked” before you are able to make such a wild claim. You FAIL on all counts.

Furthermore, in order to claim that this turns the whole AGW theory on it's head you'd have to show how this "fradulent" manipulation of this miniscule data set outweighs the mountains of other data that supports AGW. You can't even dream of such a feat with these emails.

Here’s a good summary article you need to read that keeps proper perspective on this issue.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4338343.html?page=1

 

[shagdrum]

Shag, pull your head out of your a$$ and stop the distraction with your pretzel logic. It only makes you look petty and foolish, and we don't need more proof of that. The title of this thread is “UH OH: Global Warming Scientist at CRU steps down”. Additionally, the data that is shown in the graphs Bryan posted have nothing to do w/ AGW, this is POLAR ICE CAP DATA (i.e.: evidence of GW). For this to be an issue or topic of AGW, we’d have to be discussing fossil fuels and greenhouse gas data and it’s correlation to temperature data or ice caps, not merely ice caps & temperature data. Therefore it is YOU who are misdirecting this discussion from GW to AGW. Try to stay on topic, son.

Additionally, not one shred of evidence has been found in these emails that proves that the data being analyzed by the CRU had indeed been falsified AND used to mislead the larger GW/AGW science community. All that has been revealed by these emails is that the CRU scientists involved, during the course of internal peer reviews which are designed to be self-critical, have had active discussions and debates regarding the veracity of the data and how it is analyzed & processed to draw conclusions, as well as challenging those conclusions. Certainly, some of the discussion that transpired in the emails calls into question the validity of that analysis and processing of the data. But to claim the emails alone prove the data to be fraudulent and AGW a figment of our imagination is jumping the shark. You need to see the raw data, you need to know what the “trick” process was that was supposedly applied to that data, you need to know if in fact that “trick” process WAS indeed applied to the data that was then used to draw conclusions about GW/AGW, and finally you need to know that those so-called “fraudulent” conclusions are indeed different than conclusions drawn had the data not been “tricked” before you are able to make such a wild claim. You FAIL on all counts.

Furthermore, in order to claim that this turns the whole AGW theory on it's head you'd have to show how this "fradulent" manipulation of this miniscule data set outweighs the mountains of other data that supports AGW. You can't even dream of such a feat with these emails.

Here’s a good summary article you need to read that keeps proper perspective on this issue.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4338343.html?page=1

It is facinating to watch group think in action...

it is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion
-Edmund Burke

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
-George Bernard Shaw

So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in feelings, it gains rather then loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded are it's adherents that their feelings must have some deeper ground which the argument does not reach.
-John Stuart Mill

 

[fossten]

Funny how Johnny's mind works.

"Hey, it's your job to disprove my theory! Never mind that I can't prove it!"

He's a graduate of the Dan Rather Mary Mapes "Fake But Accurate" School of Journalism.

In other news, the dominoes continue to fall:

Algore bails on Copenhagen conference

 

[fossten]

Additionally, not one shred of evidence has been found in these emails that proves that the data being analyzed by the CRU had indeed been falsified AND used to mislead the larger GW/AGW science community. All that has been revealed by these emails is that the CRU scientists involved, during the course of internal peer reviews which are designed to be self-critical, have had active discussions and debates regarding the veracity of the data and how it is analyzed & processed to draw conclusions, as well as challenging those conclusions. Certainly, some of the discussion that transpired in the emails calls into question the validity of that analysis and processing of the data. But to claim the emails alone prove the data to be fraudulent and AGW a figment of our imagination is jumping the shark. You need to see the raw data, you need to know what the “trick” process was that was supposedly applied to that data, you need to know if in fact that “trick” process WAS indeed applied to the data that was then used to draw conclusions about GW/AGW, and finally you need to know that those so-called “fraudulent” conclusions are indeed different than conclusions drawn had the data not been “tricked” before you are able to make such a wild claim. You FAIL on all counts.

Which data are you referring to - the data FALSIFIED by the CRU in England, the data THROWN IN THE DUMPSTER in East Anglia, or the data BEING WITHHELD by NASA even now under subpoena?

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

How I Wish The Global Warming Deniers Were Right...

Johann Hari
Columnist, London Independent
Posted: December 4, 2009 06:43 AM

Every day, I pine for the global warming deniers to be proved right. I loved the old world – of flying to beaches wherever we want, growing to the skies, and burning whatever source of energy came our way. I hate the world to come that I've seen in my reporting from continent after continent - of falling Arctic ice shelves, of countries being swallowed by the sea, of vicious wars for the water and land that remains. When I read the works of global warming deniers like Nigel Lawson or Ian Plimer, I feel a sense of calm washing over me. The nightmare is gone; nothing has to change; the world can stay as it was.

But then I go back to the facts. However much I want them to be different, they sit there, hard and immovable. Nobody disputes that greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, like a blanket holding in the Sun's rays. Nobody disputes that we are increasing the amount of those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And nobody disputes that the world has become considerably hotter over the past century. (If you disagree with any of these statements, you'd fail a geography GCSE).

Yet half our fellow citizens are choosing to believe the deniers who say there must be gaps between these statements big enough to fit an excuse for carrying on as we are. Shrieking at them is not going to succeed.

Our first response has to be to accept that this denial is an entirely natural phenomenon. The facts of global warming are inherently weird, and they run contrary to our evolved instincts. If you burn an odourless, colourless gas in Europe, it will cause the Arctic to melt and Bangladesh to drown and the American Mid-West to dry up? By living our normal lives, doing all the things we have been brought up doing, we can make great swathes of the planet uninhabitable? If your first response is incredulity, then you're a normal human being.

It's tempting to allow this first response to harden into a dogma, and use it to cover your eyes. The oil and gas industries have been spending billions to encourage us to stay stuck there, because their profits will plummet when we make the transition to a low-carbon society. But the basic science isn't actually very complicated, or hard to grasp. As more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere, the world gets warmer. Every single year since 1917 has been hotter than 1917. Every single year since 1956 has been hotter than 1956. Every single year since 1992 has been hotter than 1992. And on, and on. If we dramatically increase the carbon dioxide even more – as we are – we will dramatically increase the warming. Many parts of the world will dry up or flood or burn.

This is such an uncomfortable claim that I too I have tried to grasp at any straw that suggests it is wrong. One of the most tempting has come in the past few weeks, when the emails of the Hadley Centre at the University of East Anglia were hacked into, and seem on an initial reading to show that a few of their scientists were misrepresenting their research to suggest the problem is slightly worse than it is. Some people have seized on it as a fatal blow – a Pentagon Papers for global warming.

But then I looked at the facts. It was discovered more than a century ago that burning fossil fuels would release warming gases and therefore increase global temperatures, and since then, hundreds of thousands of scientists have independently reached the conclusion that it will have terrible consequences. It would be very surprising if, somewhere among them, there wasn't a charlatan or two who over-hyped their work. Such people exist in every single field of science (and they are deplorable).

So let's knock out the Hadley Centre's evidence. Here are just a fraction of the major scientific organisations that have independently verified the evidence that man-made global warming is real, and dangerous: Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, L'Academie des Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the UK's Royal Society, the Academia Brasileira de Ciencias, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the US Environmental Protection Agency... I could fill this entire article with these names.

And they haven't only used one method to study the evidence. They've used satellite data, sea level measurements, borehole analysis, sea ice melt, permafrost melt, glacial melt, drought analysis, and on and on. All of this evidence from all of these scientists using all these methods has pointed in one direction. As the conservative journalist Hugo Rifkind put it, the Hadley Centre no more discredits climate science than Harold Shipman discredits GPs.

A study for the journal Science randomly sampled 928 published peer-reviewed scientific papers that used the words "climate change". It found that 100 per cent – every single one – agreed it is being fuelled by human activity. There is no debate among climate scientists. There are a few scientists who don't conduct research into the climate who disagree, but going to them to find out how global warming works is a bit like going to a chiropodist and asking her to look at your ears.

Part of the confusion in the public mind seems to stem from the failure to understand that two things are happening at once. There has always been – and always will be – natural variation in the climate. The ebb from hot to cold is part of Planet Earth. But on top of that, we are adding a large human blast of warming – and it is disrupting the natural rhythm. So when, in opinion polls, people say warming is "natural", they are right, but it's only one part of the story.

Once you have grasped this, it's easy to see through the claim that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. In 1998, two things came together: the natural warming process of El Nino was at its peak, and our human emissions of warming gases were also rising – so we got the hottest year ever recorded. Then El Nino abated, but the carbon emissions kept up. That's why the world has remained far warmer than before – eight of the 10 hottest years on record have happened in the past decade – without quite reaching the same peak. Again: if we carry on pumping out warming gases, we will carry on getting warmer.

That's why I won't use the word "sceptic" to describe the people who deny the link between releasing warming gases and the planet getting warmer. I am a sceptic. I have looked at the evidence highly critically, desperate for flaws. The overwhelming majority of scientists are sceptics: the whole nature of scientific endeavour is to check and check and check again for a flaw in your theory or your evidence. Any properly sceptical analysis leads to the conclusion that man-made global warming is real. Denial is something different: it is when no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, could convince you. It is a faith-based position.

So let's – for the sake of argument – make an extraordinary and unjustified concession to the deniers. Let's imagine there was only a 50 per cent chance that virtually all the world's climate scientists are wrong. Would that be a risk worth taking? Are you prepared to take a 50-50 gamble on the habitability of the planet? Is the prospect of getting our energy from the wind and the waves and the sun so terrible that's not worth it on even these wildly optimistic odds?

Imagine you are about to get on a plane with your family. A huge group of qualified airline mechanics approach you on the tarmac and explain they've studied the engine for many years and they're sure it will crash if you get on board. They show you their previous predictions of plane crashes, which have overwhelmingly been proven right. Then a group of vets, journalists, and plumbers tell they have looked at the diagrams and it's perfectly obvious to them the plane is safe and that airplane mechanics – all of them, everywhere – are scamming you. Would you get on the plane? That is our choice at Copenhagen.

 

[shagdrum]

:blah: :blah: :blah:

In other words, you are assuming you have a monopoly on truth and therefore anyone disagreeing with you is wrong (hence your assuming any burden of proof is on others to counter you and your points; that you have no burden of proof to meet). That is a sign of group think and leads to the denial which you are projecting onto us...

 

[fossten]

Hey Johnny, consensus is NOT science.

Richard Lindzen is a skeptic too. His conclusion is that GW is bunk.

Cling to that sinking ship, Johnny. It's amusing to watch.

Quick quiz;

How many research papers does it take to disprove a theory?

 

[fossten]

So let's – for the sake of argument – make an extraordinary and unjustified concession to the deniers. Let's imagine there was only a 50 per cent chance that virtually all the world's climate scientists are wrong. Would that be a risk worth taking? Are you prepared to take a 50-50 gamble on the habitability of the planet? Is the prospect of getting our energy from the wind and the waves and the sun so terrible that's not worth it on even these wildly optimistic odds?

Imagine you are about to get on a plane with your family. A huge group of qualified airline mechanics approach you on the tarmac and explain they've studied the engine for many years and they're sure it will crash if you get on board. They show you their previous predictions of plane crashes, which have overwhelmingly been proven right. Then a group of vets, journalists, and plumbers tell they have looked at the diagrams and it's perfectly obvious to them the plane is safe and that airplane mechanics – all of them, everywhere – are scamming you. Would you get on the plane? That is our choice at Copenhagen.

Is it worth the risk to wreck the economy of the United States and the rest of the world on an absurd claim that is based on fraudulent massaging of data?

 

[fossten]

WALL STREET JOURNAL OPINION: WONDER LAND DECEMBER 3, 2009, 12:53 P.M. ET
Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.

By DANIEL HENNINGER

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).

Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.

This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.

The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

What would Galileo do?

The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant—with implications for a vast new regulatory regime—used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

 

[fossten]

stuff

NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming
Michael Andrews - June 4, 2009 9:37 AM

Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers correspond to warming or cooling trends. The twentieth century has featured heightened activity, indicating a warming trend. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data.

Some researchers believe that the solar cycle influences global climate changes. They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation. Skeptics, though, argue that there's little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.

Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest. A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.


Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes, "The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth's global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum. The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012."

According to the study, during periods of solar quiet, 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth's outermost atmosphere. Periods of more intense activity brought 1.4 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy.

While the NASA study acknowledged the sun's influence on warming and cooling patterns, it then went badly off the tracks. Ignoring its own evidence, it returned to an argument that man had replaced the sun as the cause current warming patterns. Like many studies, this conclusion was based less on hard data and more on questionable correlations and inaccurate modeling techniques.

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past. And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.

 

[fossten]

Furthermore, in order to claim that this turns the whole AGW theory on it's head you'd have to show how this "fradulent" manipulation of this miniscule data set outweighs the mountains of other data that supports AGW. You can't even dream of such a feat with these emails.

OOPS!

Here's your smoking gun.

Yeah, the data is bad.

FAIL.