Eating your own dog food...

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

Instead, the media will offer you irrational and hysterical whining of politicized scientists, politicians, and polar bears.

Like there's no hysterics on the other side of the argument... take for example the Mars climate warming and the big deal made by deniers about it... the fact is that the case for a climate warming on Mars is made with some pictures taken from space during 6 years or so, compare that amount of info with data that spans million of years in case of Earth, not to forget that what happens on a planet doesn't have bearing to what happens on another planet, unless the energy that comes from Sun (that's the only common factor) increases, but that can and is measured and it's not increasing... so... what's actually the point about Mars warming?

For what is worth I don't give a damn about polar bears, and I'd probably enjoy warmer climate better, but that doesn't lead me to be fooled by specious arguments like "global warming on Mars" or "H2O vapors". And the ad-hominem with "politicized scientists" and your disdain about polar bear ass kissers doesn't really convince people when most if the scientists from all over the world come to the same conclusion, that unless there's a big conspiracy... and I really don't want to start to argue against conspiracy theories like: Kennedy was not shot by Oswald, 9/11 was orchestrated by Bush, Obama was not born in US, global warming is an invention of politicized scientists.

It's useless to argue against conspiracy theories because you can't convince those people, there no amount of evidence that can convince such people who know it all. If you don't believe me, try this exercise, try to think for yourself what would convince you that global warming is real and is man-made. Put yourself this question and try to respond honestly to it and see what kind of arguments would take to change your mind and then maybe you'll find some interesting truth about your way of thinking... or maybe not, but it's worth trying.

[PhilT]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

If you have 90 minutes to spare, this is interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXm...eature=channel

[GreyGeek]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

....
.. take for example the Mars climate warming and the big deal made by deniers about it... the fact is that the case for a climate warming on Mars is made with some pictures taken from space during 6 years or so, compare that amount of info with data that spans million of years in case of Earth,

So, we should accept satellite photos showing ice cap shrinking on Earth because they appear to support AGW, and disregard decades of satellite photos and data from Mars probes, data from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto flybys, because it appears to conflict with AGW?

not to forget that what happens on a planet doesn't have bearing to what happens on another planet, unless the energy that comes from Sun (that's the only common factor) increases, but that can and is measured and it's not increasing... so... what's actually the point about Mars warming?

Who told you that Solar outflux variation was the only "common factor". You never heard of the effects of galactic dust and cosmic rays on the climate of Earth?

The data from Mars and the other planets showing that they are heating up too is presented by equally qualifed scientists in other fields of physics, and ones which are not paid by IPCC for "Deliverables" to bolster a political agenda.

For what is worth I don't give a damn about polar bears, and I'd probably enjoy warmer climate better, but that doesn't lead me to be fooled by specious arguments like "global warming on Mars" or "H2O vapors". And the ad-hominem with "politicized scientists" and your disdain about polar bear ass kissers doesn't really convince people when most if the scientists from all over the world come to the same conclusion, that unless there's a big conspiracy... and I really don't want to start to argue against conspiracy theories like: Kennedy was not shot by Oswald, 9/11 was orchestrated by Bush, Obama was not born in US, global warming is an invention of politicized scientists.

"spacious arguments"? "H2) vapors"? You don't know much about physical chemistry, do you? So, your position is to appeal to authority, rather "certain" authorities? Rather than discuss the science and data you hurl accusations of "conspiracy" as your proof, or just to belittle those who disagree with AGW? Well, accusing those folks, including equally qualified scientists, who disagree with AGW "conspiracy theorists" may have carried some weight before November 19th, 2009. But I have downloaded the CRU hacked emails and data, and as someone who holds an MS in Biochemisty + 30 graduate hours, with major hours in Chemistry, Physics, Match, Biology and General Science, and teaching certifications in all those areas, I can tell cooked, trimmed, dry labbed and other methods of falsifying data when I see it. As a programmer for several decades I can recognize rigged code when I look at it. The evidence of THEIR CONSPIRACY is OVERWHELMING.

It's useless to argue against conspiracy theories because you can't convince those people, there no amount of evidence that can convince such people who know it all. If you don't believe me, try this exercise, try to think for yourself what would convince you that global warming is real and is man-made. Put yourself this question and try to respond honestly to it and see what kind of arguments would take to change your mind and then maybe you'll find some interesting truth about your way of thinking... or maybe not, but it's worth trying.

It may have been useless as long as the AGW advocates controlled the peer review process in the CoJ journal, and some others, by having the CRU group "peer review" THEIR OWN publications and give each other glowing approval, and having the journals refuse to print opposing research or rebuttal letters, BUT, when the hacked emails revealed what they were REALLY doing behind the scenes, and how they had colluded with people in British office in charge of FOIA requests to supress them, which is a felony, and how they "lost" the original data and now depend only on their synthetic (artificial) data, and how they conspired to marginalize equally qualified "deniers", the stench becomes undeniable. To deny what they have been doing when they write it down in their own words is to be the true "denier", by any definition of the word.

Download the files and peruse them, then let's discuss them in a principled manner.

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

So, we should accept satellite photos showing ice cap shrinking on Earth because they appear to support AGW, and disregard decades of satellite photos and data from Mars probes, data from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto flybys, because it appears to conflict with AGW?

No, as I said we should not accept satellite photos by themselves, on Earth we have meteorological stations in almost every city and even on the poles, we have climate records for hundreds of years and we can check the climate records for millions of years through research of ice and rocks... And actually what do you deny here, you seem to accept the idea that Earth is warming up, right? Do you only want to get the right to make a claim about other planet climate based on 6 years observations? Sorry, that doesn't work.

Who told you that Solar outflux variation was the only "common factor". You never heard of the effects of galactic dust and cosmic rays on the climate of Earth?

Actually I haven't heard about the galactic dust and cosmic rays, but I'm not that involved in this discussion, but this seems hardly likely, in any case the burden of proof is on the people who propose this explanation. If you find 1. that the radiations increased in the last period and 2. that that affects the climate of Earth in a significant way then you have a case.

But, from want I see deniers claimed that "global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years." so you can't actually have it both ways... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0403083932.htm

"spacious arguments"? "H2) vapors"? You don't know much about physical chemistry, do you? So, your position is to appeal to authority, rather "certain" authorities?

I know a bit about chemistry, but not on this I based my evaluation of "truthiness" LOL, I based it on logic. H2O vapors existed before and will exist after, if you don't come with a rational explanation why they increased in order to explain the global weather (and not if they increased because the weather is warmer) you don't have a case. As for appeal to authorities, I don't do it more than the others try to invalidate a largely held scientific opinion because some scientists are politicized or some misbehaved. There are science crooks all around, trying to invalidate a largely held opinion because some e-mails is not going to fly for me.

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

But again try this exercise, try to think for yourself what would convince you that global warming is real and man-made. If you have problems finding such a scenario then you should realize that the problem is not with the evidence presented, the problem is within you.

This is a personal exercise, and mostly rhetorical, I don't want to "prove" anything proposing it, I just want to make people think.

[dibl]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

But again try this exercise, try to think for yourself what would convince you that global warming is real and man-made. If you have problems finding such a scenario then you should realize that the problem is not with the evidence presented, the problem is within you.

This is a personal exercise, and mostly rhetorical, I don't want to "prove" anything proposing it, I just want to make people think.

That actually is an interesting "thought experiment". Maybe it could help a person decide whether he is "objective" about the subject (or at least tries to be), versus a "true believer" -- an ideologue.

Of course, and with the help of politicians and the media, it tends to become yet another false dichotomy situation, which seems to be the plague of modern political debate.

Personally, I wouldn't doubt that the Earth is in a warming trend. It's happened many times before, and there's no huge reason, in my mind, to doubt that it could be happening now. The degree to which human activity has anything to do with it is an entirely different question, and I'm far more doubtful about that one. Consider a huge volcanic eruption, and compare the gas and heat output of that to human activity, and one can wonder whether the little increment of human-produced combustion by-products really affects the greenhouse at all.

On the other hand, it has been obvious to this American since the 1973 Arab oil embargo that a wise national policy would be to invest in development of alternative energy-for-transportation sources to petroleum, and also that coal-burning is an inherently dirty and undesirable source of electricity, cheap as it may be. So, the things that I think would be wise energy investment and development policies also align reasonably with the desirements of the AWG crowd. But for different reasons. And with zero expectation that it will affect the climate in any way.

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

dibl, that's pretty much my way of thinking, with the exception that it looks like volcanoes don't have such a big influence: http://www.grist.org/article/volcano...2-than-humans/

As for burning coal, that probably put more radiation in the atmosphere than the open air testing of atomic bombs...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

If you have 90 minutes to spare, this is interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXm...eature=channel

Interesting.

I hadn't paid much attention to global warming, since I fully understand the Stefan-Boltzman equation which equates energy radiation from a black body object to the abs T of that object to the fourth power. It also applies to "Grey" bodies, which are not perfect black bodies, except that Grey bodies neither absorb nor emit as much energy as black bodies do. The Wein approximation, a variation of the law as it applies to Infrared radiation like that which the earth emits, is sometimes used. It is a physical and mathematical certainty that as the earth's atmosphere, and/or surface, heats up, the increase in radiated energy as a function of the change in T (dE/dT) will be proportional to 4*T^3.

The Wikipedia has a somewhat good article on the Earth's temp based on the Stefan-Boltzman law,

The real Earth does not have this "grey-body" property. The terrestrial albedo is such that about 30% of incident solar radiation is reflected back into space; taking the reduced energy from the sun into account and computing the temperature of a black-body radiator that would emit that much energy back into space yields an "effective temperature", consistent with the definition of that concept, of about 255 K.[2] However, compared to the 30% reflection of the Sun's energy, a much larger fraction of long-wave radiation from the surface of the earth is absorbed or reflected in the atmosphere instead of being radiated away, by greenhouse gases, namely water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane.[3][4] Since the emissivity (weighted more in the longer wavelengths where the Earth radiates) is reduced more than than the absorptivity (weighted more in the shorter wavelengths of the Sun's radiation), the equilibrium temperature is higher than the simple black-body calculation estimates, not lower. As a result, the Earth's actual average surface temperature is about 288 K, rather than 279 K.

which is not bad, except that little bit where the wiki article writer (pro AGW?) tries to circumvent Stefan-boltzman's law by claiming that Earth isn't even a grey body, so they use a 30% albedo ruse to make it appear that the atmosphere holds on to heat by not radiating it as its temperature rises.

However, with satellite photography measuring cloud cover at any given time, and knowing the precise, measured amount of Solar radiation, measured by satellites before it enters the Earth atmosphere, and knowing the average daytime and nigh time temps (energy radiates away from the Earth both day and night) we get a much more accurate adjustment to the math mapping the Earth's radiation. MIT climatologist, Richard Lindzen, just completed a long study which demonstrates that the "Earth acts like an infrared iris; increased sea surface temperature in the tropics results in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth's atmosphere. This establishes that a negative feedback exists which counters the effects of CO2 warming by lowering the climate sensitivity". Lindzen used to be a member of the IPCC panel until he was blackballed for refusing to follow the AGW line and stuck with what his data was telling him about AGW.

When I read of the CRU hack on Drudge earlier this week, which renewed my interest in the AGW controversy that I last looked at during the Kyoto accords, I downloaded the emails and began reading them. They often referred to "M&M". I learned in the emails that one "M" is Steve McIntyre, the other "M" is Ross McKitrick, an economist AND a skilled statistician. Neither "M" is Monckton.

Monckton is a good speaker, and humorous too. I caught his joke about his "Nobel pin", mocking Al Gore's Nobel prize, which was obviously made for political purposes. Monckton talks like he is a scientist and appears to know math and statistics well, so when I looked him up in Wikipedia a while ago I was surprised to learn that he was trained as a journalist. I continued looking for evidence of science or math in his educational background, which I haven't found yet, but I did notice this: he had pick up a copy of the hacked data and in a mere eleven days after the files were released wrote a pdf (which I just scanned) reports detailing the contents of the hacked files. I've been looking at the hacked files for about 3 or 4 days and haven't read more than a fifth of the emails, but I have looked at all the rest of the data. Monckton apparently has had help in reading and identifying those "smoking guns" in the email for him to write about it so quickly. I just page 4 of his pdf and EVERY claim he makes about the misbehavior of the CRU team is dead on. I have personally read those emails which contain the points he outlines.

McIntyre's credentials as a statistician, and ALL of the AGW data is based on statistical analysis of "proxies", highly qualifies him as one who can make valid evaluations of the AGW papers. Since the CRU team has reduced their efforts to manipulations of synthetic temperature data, highly filtered computer generated (I looked at their code) approximations of "proxie" data, such as tree-ring, mud, ice cores and the like, even replacing instrumental temperatures which have been available for over a century, they are nothing more than statisticians, and their treatment of the proxies is as much McIntyre's domain as it is theirs. One does not have to know the vagaries of the science to know if the scientist is abusing the proxies manipulations and the statistical math.

Regardless, if Monckton's lack of scientific credentials should be a barrier to his commenting on the AGW controversy, then surely a railroad engineer is out of place as chairman of the IPCC. No?

What Monckton appears to be doing is
1) making money on a speaking tour in order to avoid selling his castle to pay off a 1 Million Euro prize he offered to anyone who could solve his "Eternal puzzle", and an unemployed Cambridge mathematician did it in 16 months,
2) Using his money, position, and fame as method to give a public voice to scientists who have been marginalized by the political machinery that the IPCC and the CRU has errected around the entire science industry of AGW.

Otherwise, how would you have learned about the recently completed work of the MIT Climatologist, Richard Lindzen? It is amazing that the US media has said NOTHING about the worse scientific scandal since in half a century or more. He could publish is minor journals, which the major media failed to report on. In November of 2004 he warned:

Our concerns over global warming are based on models rather than data, and if these models are correct, then man has accounted for over 4 times the observed warming over the past century (even allowing for ocean delay) with some unknown process or processes having canceled the difference. We assume, moreover, that these unknown processes will cease, in making predictions about future warming.

This statement illustrates that the observations do not support the likelihood of dangerous warming, but our ignorance may be sufficient to allow the possibility. In point of fact, our ignorance is probably not that great.


Computer Models Altered

How do we reconcile this with the claim that present models do a good job of simulating the past century? It's simple: The "accurate" model reconstructions require "forcings" of data and speculative guesses about such factors as the influence of anthropogenic aerosol emissions. In an inverse manner, trial-and-error assumptions and data are forced into the computer until the inaccurate model projections are reconciled with the observed climate. However, such inverse forcings are highly unscientific and unlikely to reach similar results regarding anything other than the particular range of data and temperature history the computer is attempting to reconstruct.

This would have been an embarrassment even to the Ptolemaic epicyclists, yet an almost identical analysis has just been presented to our government through such unscientific reconstructionist model forcings.

He was ridiculed by the IPCC and the CRU gang. Fast forward to hacked emails and we read that he was 100% correct in his claim that the computer models were rigged and the conclusions FORCED by working backwards. (This was the EXACT method used by the US Dept of Geology when they forced Federal regs upon the states feeding or getting water from the Platte River system. It was called the COHYST model, but it worked the same way. The computer programs were plugged in with the conditions the "scientists" wanted to find near the East end of the Platte, and the program worked backwards to compute the necessary conditions at Western end of the Platte. Then they looked for wells, or drilled them, which would give those conditions. The results was offered as "proof", without telling folks how they obtained it, that Platte River was drying up in the central and eastern regions of Nebraska because of over pumping by farmers. Never mind that photographs existed showing people fork fishing in the isolated pools in a DRY Platte river, which had grass growing in its main channel, as far back as 1904, and written descriptions describing the same annual event years before that! In the early sixties, long before center pivots, as a 20 year old college student, I've walked in the dry channel of the Platte river,

That they are trying to hide research non-supportive of AGW, and thus keep the public in the dark, is obvious. That they failed is an example of the power of the Internet to allow everyone to see the evidence and judge for themselves. They don't have to depend on "authorities", especially, and thankfully, since the emails show unequivocally that the CRU gang has been lying about everything.

Will the IPCC get away with forcing a political system on the world in order to "prevent" global warming? I believe they will, and most Americans will go along with it. The question is, will they be able to live with it?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

I've finished the reading of Monckton's just released PDF, which I mentioned above. The first 5 or so pages contain the information gleaned from the hacked files, and is very accurate, based on my reading of the hacked files. The remainder is a printed version of the talk he gave which is the youtube citation in a message above. The PDF is better than the talk because you can access the cited URLs and graphs from within the PDF.

All in all, the hacked files establish that a "consensuses" among "most" Climate scientists, even at the CRU, exist only in the media and CRU propaganda sites, the evidence for data manipulation and fraud is overwhelming, and AGW is non-existent. Contrary to RealClimate's claims (which are actually CRU's claims, and their own internal emails have destroyed their own credibility), there are more climate scientist apposing AGW than support it. They just aren't the ones having equal access to the journals or being asked to peer review, or are being kicked off of peer review panels if they don't rubber stamp AGW papers. Editors of Journals that do publish papers from scientists whose research contradicts AGW have been fired. Letting the science speak for itself or peer review isn't good enough for "denier" research.

In the two weeks since the hacked files were made public, the info is hot news on the Internet, but NPR, BBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and even FoxNews, either mention it in passing, quoting the CRU to "settle" the issue, or haven't mentioned it at all. Only the NYT questioned the veracity of the CRU, in one article. Except for the BBC, British newspapers are making lots of noise, but they aren't read outside of Britian. Brits are shouting for blood. The noise on the Internet won't last long because most browsers lose interest rapidly, and a million people commenting on Internet sites hasn't the visual impact as the same number of people marching outside the CRU or the White House demanding honesty in science and an investigation into the activities of the fraud perpetrators.

I'll repeat my own personal opinion -- I believe the AGW campaign's primary purpose is to throttle the global consumption of fossil fuels without scaring people by stating the obvious -- the world is running out of oil. We past the peak of world oil production 4 or 5 years ago, and we are now on the downward slope of production with a negative 3.4% production rate. It's a touchy situation. Developing alternate energy sources is a must. They started this campaign 15 years ago and I suspect that they thought they'd be farther down the back slope of the oil production curve than we are right now, which might explain the increasing hysteria of the AGW claims. A negative 3.4% growth rate means that our oil production 20 years from now will be 1/2 of what it is now. And 40 years from now, 2050, it will be 1/4 of what it is now. If our production were to drop to 1/4th of what it is now in a matter of 5 years or less it would mean a financial, social and individual catastrophe, and a massive die off of the human population. I believe that is this doomsday scenario they are trying to get a handle on. "M&M" may have put them off their schedule.

Personally, I am not optimistic. It all depends on one fact, for which we have only a guess -- how much oil is left in the 70 year old, massive Saudia Arabia oil fields? Oil fields we find today are mere puddles by comparison. Most petroleum and geology experts expected it to be empty by now. Regardless, we are on borrowed time, and with China, India and other non-first world countries now striving to reach the first world standard of living, which is totally based on Oil, it can only mean that what is still left in the bottom of the oil drum will be emptied out a lot quicker.

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

I don't believe in complicated explanations, but this is an interesting and creative one. In any case, to put such campaign in place to avoid panicking people about oil by panicking them about global warming is a bit of a complicated explanation to me of something that can have simpler explanations and actually easier solutions -- why panic people about weather when you can panic them about oil, and that's even easier since there are clear numbers with consumption and production.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

Adrian: . . . why panic people about weather when you can panic them about oil, and that's even easier since there are clear numbers with consumption and production.

Because there a powerful companies making big money on oil and oil derived business. Not just oil production, but auto business, plastics production, industrial chemicals, on and on and all the people that work in their offices. Everybody is making money on oil and don't want to give that up. Even the (so called) green recycling business depends heavily on oil! Fat middle class office workers (and many others) are too lazy to drive a bike to work. Nobody wants to stop using oil. There's not much money in the weather (or climate) business by comparison.

Everybody talks about the weather - think of it, it's a brilliant cover up.

[Adrian]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

Ole Juul, the logic doesn't hold. GreyGeek says that somebody made this brilliant invention with global warming to ween us out of oil and on the same time you say that they have interest in oil, it doesn't add up. It's one or the other.

Besides, oil is only a small part in this picture, it's coal too and we don't run out of coal that soon, US has big reserves.

[dibl]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

Fat middle class office workers (and many others) are too lazy to drive a bike to work.

@Ole Juul, you have described me perfectly!

I have seen the workers in Strasbourg and Frankfurt riding their bicycles to work -- it is an excellent arrangement. If I lived and worked there, I would gladly do it that way. When I was in college I rode a bicycle to class and it was great.

However, in the greater parts of the U.S.A. there is a very different reality. My office is 38 miles (61km) of bad under-construction freeway from my house. It is impossible -- you could not survive the first trip. This is typical -- it is not even a little unusual. Many commute farther than this. "Move closer" you might say. Well, my wife's office is about 15 miles (24km) in the opposite direction. We already moved, to have our house located between our offices. So, this is our reality -- someone's life would have to change dramatically, just for the savings of gas for the car. It's not easily fixed with a bicycle ride .......

[MoonRise]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

I did not realize we were having a global warming debate here!

OK, here's my little contribution:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

If memory serves, that report was prepared by a high school girl, at the time. And yet it is as solid and verifiable as any science I ever learned, on my way to a BS in biological sciences.

Interesting little article there. You all would have a buddy of mine really in debate over all of this. He loves this argument specifically because he agrees with the article mentioned by Dibl, that what humans introduce is tiny compared to the rest of the environment and what we are seeing is really natural progression of Earth. I do love watching people debate over this. Really amusing to me.

[MoonRise]

Re: Eating your own dog food...

Fat middle class office workers (and many others) are too lazy to drive a bike to work.

@Ole Juul, you have described me perfectly!

I have seen the workers in Strasbourg and Frankfurt riding their bicycles to work -- it is an excellent arrangement. If I lived and worked there, I would gladly do it that way. When I was in college I rode a bicycle to class and it was great.

However, in the greater parts of the U.S.A. there is a very different reality. My office is 38 miles (61km) of bad under-construction freeway from my house. It is impossible -- you could not survive the first trip. This is typical -- it is not even a little unusual. Many commute farther than this. "Move closer" you might say. Well, my wife's office is about 15 miles (24km) in the opposite direction. We already moved, to have our house located between our offices. So, this is our reality -- someone's life would have to change dramatically, just for the savings of gas for the car. It's not easily fixed with a bicycle ride .......

Spot on really. US industry topology (if I'm using the correct term here) has alway played a huge role on on US population migrations. It's also why people have to drive 25 plus miles (one way) to get to work. I'm just glad my place of employment isn't a great as Dibl's.