Hackers & Global Warming

It would be the mother of all conspiracies if turned out that such a huge majority of the scientific community has decided to con us all to, well, umm, maybe their goal is to lower of standard of living and then use their weapons of science to enslave us all in our weakened state!

 

For forgot to add the evil, maniacal laugh at the end..... BRUHAHAHA!!

 

Ah, but was your research generated as personal product (even if being done for a degree) or as payed labor? Meaning, did the University hire you to do the research, or did you do it on your own motivation?

In this case, I'm not sure how accurate that would be. Even for just the weather stations, they'd probably have to list thousands, maybe tens of thousands. It and the data should certainly be in the final, full version (submitted to the journal, not what gets published), but not in a publication. On top of that, considering the nature of the work, the specific data points taken from each station (did they use whole station data all the time, or use one station to fill in for another's missing data) are just as important as which stations.

In a hot-topic field like climatology, I'd expect there's a bit more checking, whether by officially funded researchers or by opposition people on their own. Remember, the work being done is all done on a computer, so it's simply a matter of accessing the data and the programs. That makes it a lot easier to reproduce than anything dealing with rare isotopes or hazardous materials or the like.

On top of that, from the emails prior to that one, it souns like they had a cordial relationship up to that point. Now, that may just be professional people acting professional, I don't know, but it sounds like he was snapping at a friend or something.

But that's the curious thing. The guy he was talking to didn't seem to be on the other side. The previous emails between them had been more of a, "Hey, I saw your work on X. It looked really nice, but I couldn't figure out Y..." "Yeah, I'm not sure about that myself. Let me look into it and get back to you..."

Bah, it's simpler than that, and it's been brough up already in this topic: continued research! If it turns out AGW is a hoax and global warming is a cyclical thing we can't do anything about, most of those people will probably find themselves out of work. Total career changes aren't easy.

 

If you read the supporting statements from various scientific communities you will see they are fairly toned down. The scientific community is convinced that man is having a negative impact on the environment and contributing to climate change -- statements beyond that are not so common.

 

This touches on my biggest beef about the way climate change is politicized in the US. In the scientific community, the debate isn't about whether or not man is contributing to climate change -- the debate is about severity. Reasoned disagreement from respected scientists about certain aspects of climate change theory gets twisted into evidence of a "global warming hoax" by our far right. The far left is often just as reactionary, but the far left does not wield any real power in the democratic party. The far right may well lose its standing in the GOP*, but that is yet to be seen.

* Which would be a very good thing for every American regardless of political orientation -- a solid opposition party with good ideas and a willingness to compromise is essential to good governance. A bill is not moderated by obstruction, but by active involvement in its creation. Triangulate isn't a 4 letter word.

 

T2, actually, the scientific community in general (beyond climatology) doesn't really have any consensus. Many geologists question AGW as a whole, many archeologists and anthropologists either question it or question the severity of it's impacts, and the other sciences seem to be pretty mixed from what I've seen. Of course, that's not to say there aren't a lot of believers in those fields either, but I think the whole idea of a "scientific consensus" was never anything other than AGW propaganda.

And, Drew, it's not just in America that scientists question AGW, either.

 

Actually, this is one of the things that I really like. The rest of the world rolled over and died way to easy on this issue. It took many years, but finally the people of Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. are realizing they have been lied to. I wonder who will be next...

 

NOG, actually ... you're wrong. Well, partially wrong -- there is a consensus but it's pretty vague.

Aik linked a nice wiki compendium of statements by various scientific communities on the second page of this thread -- the author did a very good job of simply posting what these major scientific organizations put out as official statements. I'll repost the link so you can see the nature and scope of the consensus:

Scientific Opinion on Climate Change

Reading through these statements you can mainly see support for further research. But the general agreement (beside the obvious "we want part of the funding") is 'something bad is happening, man is making things worse, we should look into this.'

 

I do think it is funny that it is only people quite far to the right on the political spectrum who are able to see this issue as the hoax it is. Must be some magical powers that allow them to do so and not ideological conviction at all.

 

Magical powers? And here I always thought it was my distrust of the Evil Gore which allowed me to see through his nefarious scheme to further the left wing power shift and increase both the trade deficit and national debt....

 

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this:
1.) Even the Wiki page itself admits the page is disputed.
2.) There are thousands of researchers around the world who doubt AGW, many with evidence to support their claims. As I've mentioned before, we had a whole thread about it when a bunch of them signed an open letter to the IPCC basically saying their whole report was bogus.

If you define that as a consensus, then we have a vast disagreement on definitions.

 

You exaggerate. Nowhere in that open letter did those scientists dispute the fact that man is contributing to climate change. They did, however, dispute the severity of our contribution, the strength of some of the evidence, and the severity of the problem. They did not even state the IPCC is wrong -- merely that further research is needed to back up some of it's claims. They did not say we should do nothing about climate change. They did not say that climate change is a hoax.

 

Re-read that thread, Drew, and the links posted in it. Unfortunately, the links to the letter all seem to be dead now, but the news report talking about it says:

Talking about another letter, it says:

These came up as a result of new peer-reviewed research, and they appear to be calls to question the whole idea, not slow down. Re-reading what you actually said, I'll agree that no one said "Mankind has no impact on greenhouse gasses of any kind". Of course we release CO2, H2O, Sulphur Dioxide and a slew of other gasses that alter the way sunlight enters the atmosphere and infra-red radiation leaves it. What was said, however, was that man's contribution to these gasses and the greenhouse effect overall is statistically insignificant (the grand total of all human impacts given was 0.18 degrees F, or 0.3% of the current greenhouse effect).

To anyone wishing to revisit that old thread, here it is.

 

Chris Matthews has an interesting take on this:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#34385342

 

This post really really annoys me. It's just so ...

Speaking for Australia - no, we haven't done a heel-face-turn and decided to reject science wholesale, thank you very much. The vast majority of the population sees climate change as an urgent issue. If we ever decide to go the faith-disguised-as-skepticism route, I'll swim to New Zealand, who I'm fairly sure I can vouch for safely as a very sane country.

I think disregarding the opinion of the majority of America's population when it comes to science-based matters should be a given. I mean, what, how many of you believe in a young Earth or disregard evolution? Only this time it's big business rather than priests preaching that the science is wrong. But hey, let's call it a controversy - who cares if it's a completely manufactured one?

I'm all for science-based skepticism - science needs it. But let's face it - the amount of scientific support for climate change vastly outweighs the evidence that skeptics have provided. Here, have an article, or a more recent one.

So I have a great idea - let's listen to the people who know what they're talking about, rather than the wilfully ignorant population of America.

[/rage]

Edit: also, here's a nice article on the emails: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946082-1,00.html

 

Well, allow me to explain.

Recently The Australian Parliment rejected a bill that would have put in a "cap and trade" bill like the Democrats here in the United States are trying to pass. I can't speak to a "vast majority" of the people believing in man made climate change, but your politicians seem to not.

I do find it amusing that you believe that the skeptics are the ones taking things on faith. My point of view is that it is the "true believers" that are willing to take everything on faith and recent events (and the point of this thread) seem to show that they are willing to ignore "Freedom of informaiton act requests" and destroy data to prevent their critics from examining their data.

As to science based skepticism you are absolutly correct that science needs it. However, to prove your point you have linked to articles from 2004 and January 2009. It is only in recent months that the "evidence" of potential wrongdoing is coming to light.

I agree that we should listen to the people who know what they are talking about. The only difference is that I believe we need to be able to trust and verify what these people are talking about before we blindly follow their advice.

One of my major problems with the entire science of "climatology" is that it doesn't seem like an exact science. Teen Snook is currently taking algebra. He knows that given a formula with some unknown variables he can solve it. He also knows that if there are too many unknown variables the answer is that the equation is not solvable. Doesn't it seem like that is what we are doing with climate change?

 

And round and round we go, and round and round we go.

 

I think you've bought into a half-truth about the US. Some of the same surveys that say a majority of US citizens are Creationists also say a majority of US citizens also believe in the theory of Evolution.

That may mean a bunch of people may be having it both ways or see some sort of mixing of the 2. There also a distinct group of people that are Young Earthers. However neither means the US as a whole cannot address science honestly, stereotypes may say different but those can be broken often.

Also you may have misspoke/typed many "priests" (as well as much of the rest of mainstream Christianity) in the US have no problem with the Theory of Evolution. Many "preachers" may but there is often a difference relating to which group (mainstream vs non) people with the different religious titles belong.

I wonder if the Australian government is slow to sign on for trade reasons (view doing so when others don't puts them in a trade disadvantage) or are pressured by businesses there.

I the US the amount of money flowing around in politics due to campaign funding by private individuals and groups means that bribery may hinder taking appropriate action regardless of what you view that as.

How do elections get funded there? And if it isn't with private money how do business interests get their interest/views felt in politics?


Anyway someone from the CATO Institute (right wing as far as I know) said Global Warming is 40% due to humans. I don't know if that is right but it shows some acknowledge humans have an effect. Though on the other hand if the effects are viewed as insignificant then the argument to do nothing may get pushed forwards.

About the emails, manipulating data and all that. I would say some sort of trustworthy investigation should be done that is allowed to look at whatever data can be had at (find an exemption for whatever is hidden behind property laws for the time being). I would be interested to hear what such an investigation has to say as it would have taken a hard look at what evidence is there.