Climate Justice Clips: Countdown to Copenhagen, Day 6

BuckeyeDon

Let me get to Part 2 of my response to you. First of all, we need to be very clear about the question. The debate is not about whether the temperature record for the20th century has seen warming taking place. This is universally accepted, and documented by both surface data sources (e.g., HADCRU, GISS, NCDC) and satellite sources (UAH, RSS). There is some question about the validity of that data, as the climategate letters reveal, but generally, there is no question about warming.

Instead, the question is whether the human-sourced contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is the primary cause of that warming. The basic physics do tell us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that increasing its concentration in the atmosphere will result in a radiative imbalance, leading to warming. At the same time, though, we know that the atmosphere is a highly complex, coupled, non-linear system, and that there are multiple positive and negative feedback processes which will act to either increase or decrease the temperature anomaly accordingly. The IPPC has generally held out that these feedbacks are predominantly positive, which allows them to make predictions of temperature increases of 4-8 deg C as a result of doubling of CO2.

However, all of the available empirical data suggests quite the opposite. Most immediately, we have seen that, depending upon how you want to look at the record, the past 8-10 years have seen no additional warming, but rather stable or possibly cooling temperatures, even though CO2 concentration has continued to rise by some 3ppm per year. Now I am not suggesting that this is proof that global warming is over, or that CO2 has no affect. It is far too early to tell. But this pattern was not predicted by the computer models, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attribute this to "noise," as AGW proponents are wont to do, since we are seeing divergence from the predicted temperatures greater than one sigma and approaching two.

More specifically, I suppose you have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" and are familiar with Al Gore's temperature/CO2 graph from the Vostok ice core record where he asks "Did these two ever fit together?" With this graph, Gore is trying to make the case that as CO2 goes up, temperature goes up. Unfortunately, he got this completely backward (actually he knows this too, since this was established in the peer-reviewed literature before the movie was made). In fact, what the data actually shows is that temperature rises first, and then CO2 follows, not the other way around. Temperature leads CO2, CO2 does not lead temperature.

"That may be so," say the AGW proponents, "but once the CO2 starts increasing, it contributes to further warming, so the ice core record does not disprove that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas."

Fair enough. I therefore ask the question, "If CO2 is such a powerful greenhouse gas, what causes the temperature to drop again, even while CO2 continues to rise in the ice core record?" Obviously, there was something that caused the temperature to drop, and that negative forcing was much greater than the positive CO2 forcing . Usually this is attributed to changes in the earth's rotational axis in what is known as Milankovitch cycles. But these cycles are known to be weak forcings, which therefore implies that CO2 forcing is much weaker than that.

How does one explain this? I have consulted the IPCC reports to find an answer to this. There is none given. I have posed this to many AGW believers. None have been able to answer this. Perhaps you or your cousin are able to?

BuckeyeDon

Let me get to Part 2 of my response to you. First of all, we need to be very clear about the question. The debate is not about whether the temperature record for the20th century has seen warming taking place. This is universally accepted, and documented by both surface data sources (e.g., HADCRU, GISS, NCDC) and satellite sources (UAH, RSS). There is some question about the validity of that data, as the climategate letters reveal, but generally, there is no question about warming.

Instead, the question is whether the human-sourced contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is the primary cause of that warming. The basic physics do tell us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that increasing its concentration in the atmosphere will result in a radiative imbalance, leading to warming. At the same time, though, we know that the atmosphere is a highly complex, coupled, non-linear system, and that there are multiple positive and negative feedback processes which will act to either increase or decrease the temperature anomaly accordingly. The IPPC has generally held out that these feedbacks are predominantly positive, which allows them to make predictions of temperature increases of 4-8 deg C as a result of doubling of CO2.

However, all of the available empirical data suggests quite the opposite. Most immediately, we have seen that, depending upon how you want to look at the record, the past 8-10 years have seen no additional warming, but rather stable or possibly cooling temperatures, even though CO2 concentration has continued to rise by some 3ppm per year. Now I am not suggesting that this is proof that global warming is over, or that CO2 has no affect. It is far too early to tell. But this pattern was not predicted by the computer models, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attribute this to "noise," as AGW proponents are wont to do, since we are seeing divergence from the predicted temperatures greater than one sigma and approaching two.

More specifically, I suppose you have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" and are familiar with Al Gore's temperature/CO2 graph from the Vostok ice core record where he asks "Did these two ever fit together?" With this graph, Gore is trying to make the case that as CO2 goes up, temperature goes up. Unfortunately, he got this completely backward (actually he knows this too, since this was established in the peer-reviewed literature before the movie was made). In fact, what the data actually shows is that temperature rises first, and then CO2 follows, not the other way around. Temperature leads CO2, CO2 does not lead temperature.

"That may be so," say the AGW proponents, "but once the CO2 starts increasing, it contributes to further warming, so the ice core record does not disprove that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas."

Fair enough. I therefore ask the question, "If CO2 is such a powerful greenhouse gas, what causes the temperature to drop again, even while CO2 continues to rise in the ice core record?" Obviously, there was something that caused the temperature to drop, and that negative forcing was much greater than the positive CO2 forcing . Usually this is attributed to changes in the earth's rotational axis in what is known as Milankovitch cycles. But these cycles are known to be weak forcings, which therefore implies that CO2 forcing is much weaker than that.

How does one explain this? I have consulted the IPCC reports to find an answer to this. There is none given. I have posed this to many AGW believers. None have been able to answer this. Perhaps you or your cousin are able to?

Did it occur to you that it can all happen at the same time?

You completely ignore the second part of Jarrod's mission: "introducing them to an understanding of Christianity which provides a spirituality of compassionate engagement". I wish I could say I was gathering 8000 young people who have limited contact with Christianity and 'making the most of every opportunity'.

I think you pre-judge and arrogantly dismiss what he does and says because you assert he is "Christian Left". Is that your job too? To disregard any good work, criticising and speaking negatively because it doesn't fit with your understanding of discipleship?

If you had really understood what the e-mails are all about, you would not have written your second to last paragraph. One of the primary issues of dispute is the fact that the data WAS NOT made available for all to see. Did you even read the sordid story of FOI obstructionism in:

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis... ?

This has been the contention for years that the data that supposedly proves AGW has not been made public. These scientists have used every means possible to prevent independent verification of their results.

Yes, perhaps it is true that, in science, you cannot cover up data for long. Unfortunately, it took climategate to free it, so that UEA has now finally agreed to release all data (except, of course, for the raw data for the HADCRU global temperature series, which they happened to have lost).

And if you don't realize that the scientists incriminated in the e-mails are the main players in the AGW camp, then you are simply ignorant of the state of the science. Yes, there are a lot of other climatologists and scientists out there who do support AGW, but Jones, Mann, Trenbeth, Wigley, Ammann, Wahl, Rahmstorf, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Schmidt, Santer, Overpeck, Karl, and several others are by far and away the stars of the show. There is just no escaping this fact.

This is not ad hominem, since I have not in anyway impugned their characters, or called into question their credentials. Curiously, you claim that I have done the very opposite by promoting their credentials. I have commented strictly on the basis of their conduct, and on their roles within the scientific community. It is a perfectly valid assertion that if the leading lights in a particular scientific discipline are engaging in questionable activities to prevent scrutiny of their work, then the body of their work must also be called into question.

And before you cite the "2500 scientists" who make up the IPCC, take note that that number included less than 100 so-called climatologists who participated in WG1, the physical sciences unit. Most of the participants in the process were engaged in addressing impacts of climate change or mitigation of climate change. And a very large number of participants in the IPCC were not actually scientists, but activists.

Finally, FWIW, the "anti-AGW people" do not attack the data. They only want to see it, and when they do, they want to confirm that the interpretation of the data is valid.

BuckeyeDon,

Allow me to elaborate further on the significance of the Climategate letters as they pertain to the viability of the AGW hypothesis. A large number of the e-mails discuss issues of paleoclimatology; that is, the reconstruction of historical temperature records that predate the instrumental period. These reconstructions make use various types of temperature proxies, e.g. tree rings, speleothems, varves, etc., to try to establish the temperature of the earth in the past.
The earliest temperature reconstructions for the past two millennia that appeared in the first and second IPCC reports featured significant periods of warmth during the medieval period (approx 900-1300 CE) followed by another substantial decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age (LIA). These early reconstructions (compiled by Lamb) showed that temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) were higher than the current warm period.

This particular reconstruction was problematic for the AGW hypothesis because, what it meant, is that the positive feedback processes that are posited to increase global temperatures following some warming caused by other forcings were not actually kicking in to create more warming during the MWP. You have to understand that doubling of CO2 can only physically increase temperature by about 1 deg C. This is accepted by every climatologist everywhere. The only way that we get to the catastrophic results that are being predicted is if these positive feedbacks kick in. An anomalous MWP with temperatures greater than present is therefore very problematic to the hypothesis. This led one prominent climate researcher to confide in a colleague whom he thought shared common beliefs that "we need to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

At this point, Michael Mann steps in, and publishes the "Hockey Stick Curve," a paleoclimatic reconstruction that showed flat (i.e., stable) temperatures during most of the second millennium followed by sharply rising temperatures in the 20th Century. Gone were the MWP and LIA leaving only the dramatic current warming period, appearing like the blade of a hockey stick. This reconstruction was immediately latched upon by the climate science community, quickly taking on iconic status with its appearance no less than 6 times in the IPCC TAR (3rd Assessment Report).

The disappearance of the MWP and LIA caught the eye of a retired Canadian mining engineer, Steve McIntyre, an accomplished mathematician and skilful in the use of statistical methods. He and economist academic Ross McKitrick began to examine Mann's papers, trying to reproduce his results. What they found was that not only were Mann's statistical methods faulty, that they "mined" for hockey stick shapes out of the data, but that the r2 validation statistics (that Mann failed to report in his initial paper) were essentially zero. In other words, the reconstruction was completely invalid. When M&M published their results, a firestorm erupted.

This led to the convening of two panels, one by the National Academy of Sciences, chaired by Gerald North, and the other by Edward Wegman, former chair of the American Statistical Society. Both panels returned reports that completely vindicated M&M's critique. The Wegman report was explicit and uncompromising. They conclude that Mann's paper was completely invalid, and the fact that it was ever published pointed toward a severe failure of the peer review process. The NAS report was more circumspect, couching their language in much cautious, politically-expedient terms, such that even today many ignorantly claim that the NAS report vindicated Mann. However, in subsequent Senate Committee hearings, when North was asked whether he agreed with Wegman's findings, he responded "Yes we do. We said essentially the same thing in our report."

So how does this link to Climategate? Well, Michael Mann is one of the main actors in the e-mails going back and forth. Steve McIntyre is one of "climate scientists" most vilified objects of scorn. But more importantly, the backroom discussions confirm that not only did they conspire to prevent M&M's research from being acknowledged or accepted, but that they were aware of the shortfalls in Mann's paper and in the problems with the data. One telling e-mail has Mann stating that "it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative 'MWP.'" (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=...)

Elsewhere, Keith Brtiffa expressed doubts about Mann's curve, prior to the preparation of TAR, but none of this is ever officially expressed in the public record:

"For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future background variability of our climate." (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=...)

What this clearly shows is that the uncertainties in the science are considerable, but all we have been told is that the science is solid, and that there is a consensus. This is clearly deceptive.

For another descriptive, but highly readable account of the light shed on "hide the decline" e-mail, see:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understa...

I trust that once you have looked over this information, we can have a more reasonable discussion about the science without resorting to the nonsense about "Big Oil" funding.

Did it occur to you that it can all happen at the same time?

You completely ignore the second part of Jarrod's mission: "introducing them to an understanding of Christianity which provides a spirituality of compassionate engagement". I wish I could say I was gathering 8000 young people who have limited contact with Christianity and 'making the most of every opportunity'.

I think you pre-judge and arrogantly dismiss what he does and says because you assert he is "Christian Left". Is that your job too? To disregard any good work, criticising and speaking negatively because it doesn't fit with your understanding of discipleship?

The problem with the 'Christian Right' is that they are to caught up on being 'pro-life' and anti-gay than freeing us from the myth of redemptive violence and following the teaching of a homeless rabbi...Jesus hasn't got the environment covered, through his teachings of non-violence he gives us the tools to recreate the system which prevents climate justice.

The climate needs the alliance of the religious and the secular...not only do the lives of our children's children depend on it but the lives of the majority of people in the developing world who are already being adversely affected by climate change.

RobTan, let's look at your post carefully. First, it is essential to your claims that you post citations to Mann's hockey-stick and to McIntyre's critique of Mann's work.

Second. You claim that Mann's work went back "two millenia". It did NOT. It only went back to 1,000 AD. Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hughes, Malcolm K. (1998), "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" (PDF), Nature 392: 779

I suggest children that you all take a step back from the current hoax and ask yourselves why the world is being distracted by yet another swindle that will once again profit those who have the most to gain from your falling for their wicked schemes ...

As for the Lord Jesus Christ leave Him out of your bickering between yourselves...He is not on the side of the climate warming alarmists and any man woman or child who is arrogant enough to think that mankind can cause damage to His creation that depends upon plentiful carbon emissions ..the more the better just check out the thriving foliage along freeways converting it to oxygen for the benefit of His ultimate creation which is man...should in His opinion have their head examined...

He is despairing at man's stupidity as they fall once again with such passion for the plans of the devil who comes only to steal, kill and destroy...

To those children awake enough to see the fiction for what it is congratulations....

You might like to know that the Lord Jesus Christ has been exposing for years all the fictions we have at one time or another been caught up in...Including the fiction of His return....

He has been on the planet since His rebirth on January 11th 1944 to Sydney Australia which is Ephraim meaning Bethlehem or double fruit...

You would all be better to spend your time researching His teachings of all mysteries and where we are all headed ... no one is going to go anywhere in a rapture that is an invention by the same devil who has invented climate change...

The change we are headed for is which hemisphere the earth will have crashed through to since the earth travels at a speed of 69,000kph being pulled by the sun in a northward path...

The reason ALL OF THE PLANETS HAVE HEATED UP INSIGNIFICANTLY is because we are getting closer to the magnetic gauze that suspends in place what the Hubble telescope operators described as "crushed galaxies"....

So we traveling at 69,000kph are about to crash through an asteroid belt from the south side to the north side of the equatorial line of the Milky Way Galaxy...

When we do it will be the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord and the judgment of mankind who has rejected God today since they have been deceived by the "devil who was cast down to the earth and deceives the whole world "....

It is the souls of the wicked who will be taken off the earth and it has already begun..the soul leaves the body at death and will be taken by their angels to where they belong...hence the two in a field and the one will be taken...the two in a bed and the one will be taken...

The meek inherit the earth since the Kingdom of God comes to the earth and is a real, physical, temporal everlasting city that is built in cooperation with God by the ones that know Him and do what He suggest they do in order to create paradise on the earth where He dwells amongst men...

You cannot get any more "feet of clay" than those of the Lord Jesus Christ who has a name today that He has been revealing (rev.19;12) to anyone who has the ears to hear and the eyes to see what He is telling and showing mankind....

The evidence of His return is in the measurements of the earth and the Great Pyramid in the midst of Egypt which is the altar to the Lord Is.22;22...built 5000 years ago by the descendants of Noah who were the Shepherd Kings and men of brilliance instructed by God to build what they did so that in this time now...the end of the age...the incorruptible evidence of who the Christ and His family is at His second coming cannot be denied, even though the stupid and the arrogant try through their ignorance and dumbed down belief in a Jesus that is not real...

The Christ condemns all Christianity as having got it wrong and tells them they are worshiping Lucifer with the mask of Jesus placed upon Him ...it all began with the Apostle Paul who was a devil...

Time to get humble and understand that you could not possibly comprehend the mind of God and you must become like little children if you want to enter or see the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth which is the promise of everlasting life for those who make it...

The Christ is not going anywhere ...He died once to show us all that God cannot die...He is the big Kahuna yes, however we are His wife...the souls of all mankind are female and He the only male soul which is why He is the alpha...your souls come from your mother who is Ammah...Abbah and Ammah...Hebrew for Father and Mother...it was they who were talking to each other when they said in the beginning "let us make male and female in our image"...yes God does have a wife...mankind from their Mother Ammah who is God from out of her Husband Abbah who was in the beginning and is now at the end the Omega on the earth with His creation....

Time to awaken to the Truth that will set you all free...

Love, peace and goodwill to all of you...

http://www.youtube.com/user/MichelleNye#p/u/11/...

lucaspa,

You need to read my post more carefully. First of all, I never claimed that Mann's reconstruction went back two millennia, only that previous reconstructions did. Secondly, I did not claim that the MWP was warmer than the present. I only noted that pre-Mannian reconstructions showed temperatures greater than present. This was the problem point, because it showed that the earth's global temperature exceeded the current temperature within the very recent past (geologically speaking) and that it both needed to have natural causes, and that the positive feedbacks that are expected to kick in and further warm the planet were not sufficiently powerful to result in ever-increasing temperatures, e.g. increased water vapour, decreasing albedo due to melting ice caps, methane released from melting permafrost - all those positive feedbacks that are supposed to drive our current climatic system into death spiral. On this point I should have been more careful with my language. I did not mean to imply that these were not active during the MWP, but only that they were not sufficient to drive the climate into an unstable state.

Please note that I am not trying to defend the idea that the MWP was warmer than present. I am only describing the scientific understanding at that time that made it necessary for a new temperature reconstruction. Mann's hockey stick fit the bill.

You are simply repeating the mantra produced by the Hockey Team once the hockey stick was shown to be broken, namely that the MWP was localized to the NH, or to Europe only, as some on the Team have claimed. This claim is rather difficult to support in light of the published global proxy data summarized on the following interactive diagram:

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalW...

The data show that the MWP was global in extent, and that it is plausible that temperatures were comparable or greater than present (however, this does require some assumptions about the reliability of proxy data in general - a discussion that I won't engage in here). But if we extend back further in time to the Holocene Optimum (5000-9000 ybp), there is a much stronger case that temperatures were considerably warmer than the present (as Briffa alludes to, but for which he has no explanation). What was the cause of the warming?

Now, concerning Mann's ascription of the MWP as a local phenomenon, I am not going to try to parse or refute his statements. My point in raising this was simply that he played a central and coordinating role in the attempt to eliminate the MWP, since it is very problematic for the AGW hypothesis. The context of that particular e-mail series is that he has been asked to prepare an article for EOS in response to a paper by Soon and Baliunas, which demonstrated global proxy evidence for the MWP. In whatever way you choose to interpret his statement in the e-mail, his objective is indisputable: he had to eliminate the MWP.

As for Briffa, you are mostly affirming my point, though I think that perhaps you are getting too smart for your own good. When he talks about "summer response data" he is not talking about a proxy that only includes summer temperatures but not the other seasons. Rather, he is talking about tree ring proxies. Trees respond to summer temperatures. There are no special proxies that measure only summer, or only winter.

You make one comment, though, with which I must strenuously take issue, namely that:

"He is not arguing current GW, but rather that climate over the Holocene has fluctuated... What we have are 2 scientists quite frankly doing what they do: arguing whatever can be argued. BUT, this is not part of an argument about current GW."

The argument about historical temperatures is absolutely about the current warming. If it can be shown that current temperatures are indeed unprecedented, then the weight of evidence strongly supports human causation for the current warming period. However, if the paleo record shows that temperatures have been higher within recent geological history, then there had to be natural causes. And until those natural causes are understood and explained, then we CAN NOT with any confidence attribute current warming to human activity. If we don't understand what caused higher temperatures in the past, such as the Holocene Optimum which was several degrees warmer than the present, then how do we know that these same processes are not active today? This is precisely the point that Briffa is making. But rather than making his doubts publicly known, he chooses to remain concealed within the bubble, and thus allows the corruption of the scientific process to proceed unhindered. Perhaps, if Briffa had spoken out at the time about these doubts, then the science today would be in much better shape, and climategate would have never happened. Ah, but maybe I am dreaming a little too optimistically here.

If you had really understood what the e-mails are all about, you would not have written your second to last paragraph. One of the primary issues of dispute is the fact that the data WAS NOT made available for all to see. Did you even read the sordid story of FOI obstructionism in:

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis... ?

This has been the contention for years that the data that supposedly proves AGW has not been made public. These scientists have used every means possible to prevent independent verification of their results.

Yes, perhaps it is true that, in science, you cannot cover up data for long. Unfortunately, it took climategate to free it, so that UEA has now finally agreed to release all data (except, of course, for the raw data for the HADCRU global temperature series, which they happened to have lost).

And if you don't realize that the scientists incriminated in the e-mails are the main players in the AGW camp, then you are simply ignorant of the state of the science. Yes, there are a lot of other climatologists and scientists out there who do support AGW, but Jones, Mann, Trenbeth, Wigley, Ammann, Wahl, Rahmstorf, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Schmidt, Santer, Overpeck, Karl, and several others are by far and away the stars of the show. There is just no escaping this fact.

This is not ad hominem, since I have not in anyway impugned their characters, or called into question their credentials. Curiously, you claim that I have done the very opposite by promoting their credentials. I have commented strictly on the basis of their conduct, and on their roles within the scientific community. It is a perfectly valid assertion that if the leading lights in a particular scientific discipline are engaging in questionable activities to prevent scrutiny of their work, then the body of their work must also be called into question.

And before you cite the "2500 scientists" who make up the IPCC, take note that that number included less than 100 so-called climatologists who participated in WG1, the physical sciences unit. Most of the participants in the process were engaged in addressing impacts of climate change or mitigation of climate change. And a very large number of participants in the IPCC were not actually scientists, but activists.

Finally, FWIW, the "anti-AGW people" do not attack the data. They only want to see it, and when they do, they want to confirm that the interpretation of the data is valid.

I wonder what the people of Shishmaref, Alaska, would say about your characterizing Christians concerned about climate change as having an "agenda" that takes precedence over the Gospel.

Shishmaref is an Inupiaq (Inuit Eskimo) village on the northwest shore of the Seward Peninsula--northwest of Nome. They are mostly Lutheran Christians. Several years ago they decided they had to move their village because higher sea levels caused by climate change are washing the village out to sea. They chose an inland place along Tin Creek several years ago as a good site to relocate the town. Now they are being told that the chosen location is unsuitable and they must seek another location. The reason is that the permafrost along Tin Creek is melting and the ground is unstable.

(See two articles in The Lutheran magazine; "Weathering the Storms," December 2004 and "Shishmaref, Alaska, Out to Sea," March 2009.)

Do you think the labels of "eco-prophet" and "Christian Left" are sufficient to describe our Christian compassion and concern about our own brothers and sisters who are being adversely affected by climate change?

Think about that for a few minutes before attacking us with labels and epithets.

RobTan, let's look at your post carefully. First, it is essential to your claims that you post citations to Mann's hockey-stick and to McIntyre's critique of Mann's work.

Second. You claim that Mann's work went back "two millenia". It did NOT. It only went back to 1,000 AD. Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hughes, Malcolm K. (1998), "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" (PDF), Nature 392: 779

I think it is useing a lie to push their ideas. there is no man made global warming. yes take care of the environment, being a christian this should be second nature,shouldnt need to push for eco-prophets. nature changes all the time. thats life. honesty is important and there isnt much of that in this environment "emergency" that is being pushed. The other point is that the UN has no concern for the poor. they people they have chosen to make us believe in global warming are liars. and the proposals they want to accomplish will Not help the poor but make it harder for them. If you cant see that then you have blinders on.

If you had really understood what the e-mails are all about, you would not have written your second to last paragraph. One of the primary issues of dispute is the fact that the data WAS NOT made available for all to see. Did you even read the sordid story of FOI obstructionism in:

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis... ?

This has been the contention for years that the data that supposedly proves AGW has not been made public. These scientists have used every means possible to prevent independent verification of their results.

Yes, perhaps it is true that, in science, you cannot cover up data for long. Unfortunately, it took climategate to free it, so that UEA has now finally agreed to release all data (except, of course, for the raw data for the HADCRU global temperature series, which they happened to have lost).

And if you don't realize that the scientists incriminated in the e-mails are the main players in the AGW camp, then you are simply ignorant of the state of the science. Yes, there are a lot of other climatologists and scientists out there who do support AGW, but Jones, Mann, Trenbeth, Wigley, Ammann, Wahl, Rahmstorf, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Schmidt, Santer, Overpeck, Karl, and several others are by far and away the stars of the show. There is just no escaping this fact.

This is not ad hominem, since I have not in anyway impugned their characters, or called into question their credentials. Curiously, you claim that I have done the very opposite by promoting their credentials. I have commented strictly on the basis of their conduct, and on their roles within the scientific community. It is a perfectly valid assertion that if the leading lights in a particular scientific discipline are engaging in questionable activities to prevent scrutiny of their work, then the body of their work must also be called into question.

And before you cite the "2500 scientists" who make up the IPCC, take note that that number included less than 100 so-called climatologists who participated in WG1, the physical sciences unit. Most of the participants in the process were engaged in addressing impacts of climate change or mitigation of climate change. And a very large number of participants in the IPCC were not actually scientists, but activists.

Finally, FWIW, the "anti-AGW people" do not attack the data. They only want to see it, and when they do, they want to confirm that the interpretation of the data is valid.

There is nothing in the so-called climategate revelations that casts serious doubt on the actual scientific findings of climate change. There is some evidence that climate scientists are--believe it or not--human and subject to the same frailties as all of us. I wrote about all of this below in the Day 7 post.

As I also wrote there, climategate is based on the work of burglars and thieves (computer hackers). Can we really trust that they provided us with the full context of the purloined emails? I rather doubt it.

Uhhhh... Perhaps you ought to stop presuming that you know where I'm getting my information.

As a matter of fact, my information comes primarily from a cousin of mine, whom I grew up with and trust and who is himself a research scientist in the bio-medical field at a medical school in the NYC area. His area of research does not intersect in any way with that of the climatologists and related disciplines, so he is has no personal axe to grind. Like all good scientists, he follows the evidence, not politics.

Here is what he wrote to me about "Climategate":

"I don't see anything that would [call the conclusion of Global warming into question]. I do see some human bitching and personality clashes, but nothing that challenges the data itself.

"Remember, the data on climate change has come from several people at multiple institutions. For instance, the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] collects data on temps world wide also. Their data is consistent with the CRU['s] [Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia].

"There was a paper that recently made the news. Did you see or hear about it? Looking at record high and low temps in the US over the last 20 years, the researchers found twice as many record highs as record lows. Think about it. If the climate were constant, there should be just as many record lows as highs. Not twice as many record highs. The CRU had nothing to do with that paper.

"I see complaints about sub-standard papers. Everyone has them. [Our own] Pathology Dept. did a journal club on a paper by the head of the NCI about 5 years ago. At the end we could not understand how the paper got past peer review -- it was so bad. These guys complain about a couple of papers the same way."

I will leave you with the challenge my cousin gave to another correspondent, who is a climate change skeptic:

"So, why don't you pick out a few things that you think call global warming into question and we can discuss them."

Why don't you do the same? Find some specific emails that actually raise doubts about the climate data. Show that they actually conspired to destroy data. As I wrote earlier, they simply didn't have the space to store it, but the data still exists at the original collection sites. (The biggest laugh over the climate change deniers is the notion that these scientists are conspiring to get their grubby hands on huge amounts of research money. Guess what? They've often been forced to get by with less than ideal funding for their research. Please contrast that, if you will, with the steady stream of huge amounts of money pouring into the denier camp from the fossil fuel extraction industry. As they say, follow the money trail.)

And, as my cousin indicates, other organizations like the USGS have collected data that corroborates the data that the UEA researchers supposedly "destroyed." So there's been no loss of data.

The idea that the UEA researchers were involved in "active and purposeful deception" is an inference at best. You accuse me of listening to "spin!" Why don't you give us some specific examples, drawn from the leaked emails, that demonstrates purposeful deception. And please provide us with the full context.

As I wrote earlier in these threads, this leak, hack, theft, or whatever it was is clearly a desperation attempt to derail the Copenhagen proceedings (not that I really expect anything of substance to come out of them anyway, but that's a separate matter). I try to base my understanding of scientific matters on actual evidence and fact, not on character assassination attempts. I suggest you think about that before you come back here trying to tell us what these emails reveal about the character of these scientists.

Great tune. Catchy!

Unfortunately, it is wasted on a campaign for a cause that is crumbling to pieces at the moment. The recently-released Climategate documents show that heart and soul of the "science" behind the AGW hypothesis and the IPCC is riddled with manipulation, coercion, misrepresentation, obfuscation and deceit. There is deep rot here. And it cast serious doubts about the basis for global warming alarmism.

Copenhagen must fail given these revelations. This is for the better for the poor of this world. There can be no justice so long as the developing world is deprived of affordable sources of energy. There can be no justice for the poor so long as the massive increase in expenditures proposed under Copenhagen go toward the carbon traders, and toward the owners of the new technologies. There will be no justice for the poor when the money that would otherwise go toward education, agriculture, health care, and combating easily preventable diseases, is instead funneled into the pockets of the eco-entrepeneurs who are setting themselves up to profit magnificently from Copenhagen (did someone say, Al Gore?)

In my own Province of British Columbia, the schools are mandated to reduce CO2 emissions to zero. But the school boards have been given no additional funding to do this. As a result, the purchase of text books need to be cut, special-needs instructors need to be laid off, extra-curricular activities eliminated, and buildings fall into disrepair. This is only a microcosm of what will happen around the world if Copenhagen goes through. The poor will suffer enormously!

Sojourners knows very well that poverty begets more poverty. This globalist climate change agenda will only engender more poverty, doing more harm to the truly disenfranchised of this world than any hypothetical (and I would argue, highly exaggerated) threat from future warming.

Don't bother. My guess is that Paul knows far more than you'll ever know about climate science. He is NOT ignorant of the "contours of the debate." You would not want to get into a discussion with him, because you would come up way short, I am confident. He doesn't brook ignorance masquerading as scientific wisdom, either.

To repeat, there is no smoking gun. It's all been manufactured by the denial industry. Take a look at the blog posting I linked below.

If you had really understood what the e-mails are all about, you would not have written your second to last paragraph. One of the primary issues of dispute is the fact that the data WAS NOT made available for all to see. Did you even read the sordid story of FOI obstructionism in:

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis... ?

This has been the contention for years that the data that supposedly proves AGW has not been made public. These scientists have used every means possible to prevent independent verification of their results.

Yes, perhaps it is true that, in science, you cannot cover up data for long. Unfortunately, it took climategate to free it, so that UEA has now finally agreed to release all data (except, of course, for the raw data for the HADCRU global temperature series, which they happened to have lost).

And if you don't realize that the scientists incriminated in the e-mails are the main players in the AGW camp, then you are simply ignorant of the state of the science. Yes, there are a lot of other climatologists and scientists out there who do support AGW, but Jones, Mann, Trenbeth, Wigley, Ammann, Wahl, Rahmstorf, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Schmidt, Santer, Overpeck, Karl, and several others are by far and away the stars of the show. There is just no escaping this fact.

This is not ad hominem, since I have not in anyway impugned their characters, or called into question their credentials. Curiously, you claim that I have done the very opposite by promoting their credentials. I have commented strictly on the basis of their conduct, and on their roles within the scientific community. It is a perfectly valid assertion that if the leading lights in a particular scientific discipline are engaging in questionable activities to prevent scrutiny of their work, then the body of their work must also be called into question.

And before you cite the "2500 scientists" who make up the IPCC, take note that that number included less than 100 so-called climatologists who participated in WG1, the physical sciences unit. Most of the participants in the process were engaged in addressing impacts of climate change or mitigation of climate change. And a very large number of participants in the IPCC were not actually scientists, but activists.

Finally, FWIW, the "anti-AGW people" do not attack the data. They only want to see it, and when they do, they want to confirm that the interpretation of the data is valid.

lucaspa,

You need to read my post more carefully. First of all, I never claimed that Mann's reconstruction went back two millennia, only that previous reconstructions did. Secondly, I did not claim that the MWP was warmer than the present. I only noted that pre-Mannian reconstructions showed temperatures greater than present. This was the problem point, because it showed that the earth's global temperature exceeded the current temperature within the very recent past (geologically speaking) and that it both needed to have natural causes, and that the positive feedbacks that are expected to kick in and further warm the planet were not sufficiently powerful to result in ever-increasing temperatures, e.g. increased water vapour, decreasing albedo due to melting ice caps, methane released from melting permafrost - all those positive feedbacks that are supposed to drive our current climatic system into death spiral. On this point I should have been more careful with my language. I did not mean to imply that these were not active during the MWP, but only that they were not sufficient to drive the climate into an unstable state.

Please note that I am not trying to defend the idea that the MWP was warmer than present. I am only describing the scientific understanding at that time that made it necessary for a new temperature reconstruction. Mann's hockey stick fit the bill.

You are simply repeating the mantra produced by the Hockey Team once the hockey stick was shown to be broken, namely that the MWP was localized to the NH, or to Europe only, as some on the Team have claimed. This claim is rather difficult to support in light of the published global proxy data summarized on the following interactive diagram:

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalW...

The data show that the MWP was global in extent, and that it is plausible that temperatures were comparable or greater than present (however, this does require some assumptions about the reliability of proxy data in general - a discussion that I won't engage in here). But if we extend back further in time to the Holocene Optimum (5000-9000 ybp), there is a much stronger case that temperatures were considerably warmer than the present (as Briffa alludes to, but for which he has no explanation). What was the cause of the warming?

Now, concerning Mann's ascription of the MWP as a local phenomenon, I am not going to try to parse or refute his statements. My point in raising this was simply that he played a central and coordinating role in the attempt to eliminate the MWP, since it is very problematic for the AGW hypothesis. The context of that particular e-mail series is that he has been asked to prepare an article for EOS in response to a paper by Soon and Baliunas, which demonstrated global proxy evidence for the MWP. In whatever way you choose to interpret his statement in the e-mail, his objective is indisputable: he had to eliminate the MWP.

As for Briffa, you are mostly affirming my point, though I think that perhaps you are getting too smart for your own good. When he talks about "summer response data" he is not talking about a proxy that only includes summer temperatures but not the other seasons. Rather, he is talking about tree ring proxies. Trees respond to summer temperatures. There are no special proxies that measure only summer, or only winter.

You make one comment, though, with which I must strenuously take issue, namely that:

"He is not arguing current GW, but rather that climate over the Holocene has fluctuated... What we have are 2 scientists quite frankly doing what they do: arguing whatever can be argued. BUT, this is not part of an argument about current GW."

The argument about historical temperatures is absolutely about the current warming. If it can be shown that current temperatures are indeed unprecedented, then the weight of evidence strongly supports human causation for the current warming period. However, if the paleo record shows that temperatures have been higher within recent geological history, then there had to be natural causes. And until those natural causes are understood and explained, we CAN NOT with any confidence attribute current warming to human activity. If we don't understand what caused higher temperatures in the past, such as the Holocene Optimum which was several degrees warmer than the present, then how do we know that these same processes are not active today? This is precisely the point that Briffa is making. But rather than making his doubts publicly known, he chooses to remain concealed within the bubble, and thus allows the corruption of the scientific process to proceed unhindered. Perhaps, if Briffa had spoken out at the time about these doubts, then the science today would be in much better shape, and climategate would have never happened. Ah, but maybe I am dreaming a little too optimistically here.

Worth reading:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/co...