Steve Hayward is one of the smartest guys I know. He is a fellow at American Enterprise Institute. He has written two 700 page books on Reagan (the second of which I am about half done with.) He has long published the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators" which gives real data on exactly what is really going on with the environment.
He wrote the cover story for the Weekly Standard this week, on ClimateGate. Great stuff. He read ALL the emails, and did a great job of characterizing the narrative they reveal. Must read.
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Hey, Rob, until you start talking about the fact that the radio station you are heard on, KXL, doesn't hold Lars Larson accountable for his fabrications, you are in no position to be talking about this.
Oh, and I notice you've had no comment about LetterGate. You know, and actual scandal. Of course, the fabrications came from people on your side, so it's now wonder you're silent about it.
RR:
First, I DID comment on your little whine about "lettergate" - over on the thread where you made the whine.
I am still finding it very amusing, this little game of moral equivalence you have going here.
ClimateGate: an international scandal involving billions of dollars in tax funded research, where the scientists and data have been shown to be corrupt, and where the policy implications of the fraud they were perpetrating would impact the well being and lifestyle of hundreds of millions of people, destroy jobs, and drive up the cost of energy.
"LetterGate:" - possible misstatements on a campaign mailer funded by a political action committee.
Yeah, that's the same thing. Terrific sense of perspective you have there, RR!
Rob,
From what I've seen, "ClimateGate" is much ado about very little.
One of the supposed "big deals" is an email saying that one study shouldn't be published because the science was bad. After it got published, the editor of the journal that published resigned, because the science was bad.
It's also doesn't change the fact that the planet has been getting warmer, and is continuing to get warmer, in spite of deniers attempts at obfuscation by using one year that was exceptionally warm as a base year.
What I don't get is, how can you sleep at night? The fact is that the vast majority of climate scientists--you know, the people who actually study this stuff--say that the planet is getting warmer, and that human activity is a major factor.
Are you really so confident that the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong that you're willing to risk catastrophe for much of the planet on it? Really?
Talk about arrogance.
I would also say that folks on the right are very happy to go along with fabrications that support their point of view. Remember the fabrications that led to the Iraq War? Gee, how many people lost their jobs over that? How much outrage from the right was there about that? There are those on the right who still cling to the fantasy that there were no fabrications involved.
Roadsnob. Yawn.
RR: Phil Jones resigned, Mann is under investigation by U. Penn. How can you say it is much ado about nothing?
If nothing else, the emails show that the "science is settled" crowd had all sorts of doubts about the science itself.
Of course they show a lot more, too. Only a complete ideologue would deny this. Read Clive Crook in the Atlantic this month to see how an honest liberal reacts to the scandal: http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/11/more_on_climategate.php
"The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering," he says.
The "vast majority" of climate scientists agree? You mean the ones like the guys at CRU who controlled the peer reviewed journals and whose incomes and standing depended on bringing in research grants based on the premise that CO2 was a problem?
Those guys?
Hey RoadRunner, please show us the evidence that man's CO2 can actually cause dangerous warming.
Otherwise please be quite.
Thanks
JK
RR,
You dump on Rob for allegedly not responding to your Very Important observations.
Yet I note that you've been oddly quiet in regard to my reply to your identical claims (in italics below) last month:
RR,
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that humans are causing global warming, and that it may have catastrophic results for humans.
I can see how that line may frighten you; it does sound scary. However, it is also untrue.
That line came from Dr. James Hansen, who is presently AlGore's right-hand man. You may recognize the name; if you don't you certainly should. In the 1970's he was saying the same thing - except his concern at that time was global cooling:
On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.
So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?
"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story.
By this point in time, according to Hansen and his spiffy computer models, and acoording to a number of others back in the day, the planet should be essentially completely glaciated. You may have noticed that this has not occurred.
Hansen recieves periodic infusions of cash from one George Soros; the last record of which I'm aware is a gift of $720,000 in 2006.
These emails are much ado about nothing. So, somebody emailed that a paper shouldn't be published because it had problems. It eventually got published, then the editor-in-chief resigned because of it. I'd say the person who emailed that the paper shouldn't see the light of day was right in the first place--bad science is bad science.
I don't know about you, RR, but I've been through the peer-review process a few times, and so I tend to discount most of your above paragraph. It seems to me that this is not an area in which you have experience, although you obviously feel qualified to generate an opinion.
When you start talking about "good science" and "bad science", you're rather missing the point of science itself. If observations or effects can be independently replicated, we have science. When replication is not possible, we have non-science. In the latter category, we have Pons and Fleishman, who claimed to have discovered "cold fusion". Others, armed with the same apparatus and guidelines, failed to replicate their claim.
In the case of the AGW enthusiasts, a similar level of replication applies - whether or not this results from the refusal of the "scientists" involved to make freely available their data and methods provides considerable fodder for speculation; it is fact, however, that their refusal to permit independent analysis renders their conclusions non-science.
You may call a package of some 3,000 relevant documents and emails which appear to indicate massive fraud in addition to intentional witholding of data and methodology "much ado about nothing", but I suggest, RR, that you are neither scientist nor Shakespeare.
"Roadrunner said...
Rob, From what I've seen, "ClimateGate" is much ado about very little. "
And there is your problem. You haven't seen.
Instead you have chosen to perceive narrowly and conveniently what fits best the continued fraud.
Even with the CRU hack it is not limited to simple emails taken out of context. The correct context is well established in the accompanying CRU Hack files containing data and programmer notes.
But you haven't seen them.
Just as you haven't seen the local AGW fraud producing one fabrications after another.
No you compare it all to some petty campaign mailer suggesting that mailers is a scandal?
I get a regular flow of David Wu mailers. You want political mailer scandal? How about from a sitting congressman?
What a sleazebag.
As for ClimateGate the abundant exposure of every angle of the AGW fraud leaves you defending like an idiot what is entirely indefensible.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/05/the-smoking-code-part-2/
002 2. ; PLOTS 'ALL' REGION MXD timeseries
007 7. ;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
011 11. fudge factor
012 12.'Oooops!'
026 26. ; Get regional tree lists and rbar
050 50. ; Now normalise w.r.t. 1881-1960
055 55. ; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
060 60. ; Now plot them
077 77. ; Extract the post 1600 part
083 83. ; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
088 88. ; Now plot it too
097 97. ; Now overplot their bidecadal components
105 105. ; Now overplot their 50-yr components
115 115. ; Now compute the full, high and low pass correlations between the two
145 145. printf,1,' '
148 148. close,1
150 150. end
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