There is only one goddess Gaia and Al Gore is her only prophet...

[eppie]

You don't see an issue then with people choosing to live within a meter of sea level, or below sea level? Worrying about floods in Bangladesh, would be like worrying about lethal cold weather in Minnesota. I seem to recall a nation that reclaimed a significant portion of their territory from the sea by using technology...

Of course you are right in theory....but try to explain that to those 200 million people in the Ganges Delta who were born there and or so poor that even thinking about moving somewhere else costs too much.

It is easy talking when you are born in the right place, doesn't matter if you are right or not.

Again, the big advantage you have is that you can consume 100 times the global average human energy consumption and your only problems are high taxes or a gas price of 4 dollars a gallon.....your behavior can be compared with a person living in a danger zone.....difference is that that person often doesn't have a choice.

The Netherlands will be fine.....we know how to protect ourselves from the sea.....most of the country is below sea level already.....an extra meter just means pumping a bit harder.....in Bangladesh they don't have this possibility.

[eppie]

Hi,
I suggest you change that 'normally I wouldn't' to 'I never' and make that your mantra.

First I think it is important for making my point. And second I think Kandrathe can defend himself. I think people that start comparing Gore and Obama with war criminals, religious nut jobs and dictators have thick enough skin.

The problem with those remarks is that you imply that the people that disagree with you do so only out of self centered motives. T
--Pete

No I imply that people that are scared about paying more taxes are that because of self centered motives.
I don't think kandrathe life is governed by self centered motives, at least that is how I think I know him, but his obsession with Obama and Gore also doesn't seem very rational to me.

[eppie]

No. You don't have it straight. There is no plot, other than the individual motivations of each participant. Mr. or Ms. Scientist wants grant money, and if that means fawning all over Al Gore and his ilk, and keeping your mouth shut about any "truth" you've discovered that contradicts the current political frenzy, then so be it.

This is an argument you read a lot on internet forums.
Do you really think that people wanting grant money chose to work on climate science?
There has always been much more money from industrial funding in this topic, both direct (work for a company instead of a university) as indirect (oil industry has always been a big sponsor of chemistry and physics research.
Only these last years a bigger grant wave has come up for climate related research......but that was after the human caused greenhouse effect was for 90% sure (and we are at what? 95% now).
Every high profile scientist that goes against this theory ensures himself of a well paid job at Exxon or of course as adviser for the GOP.

[--Pete]

Hi,

No I imply that people that are scared about paying more taxes are that because of self centered motives.

Poor logic for two reasons. And using 'scared' is a transparent emotional tactic -- say rather that they are 'opposed'.

First reason why that statement is poor logic: There are reasons other than selfishness to oppose some taxes. For instance, in the USA a lot of people seem to think that the solution to our poor educational system is more money. And yet, we pay more per child than nearly everyone else. So, many of us feel that without meaningful educational reform, approving additional funds for education is just throwing more money into a failed system. Does that make us selfish, or does that make us concerned for the real problem?

Second reason why that is poor logic: While many people who want to avoid additional taxes are often against proposed environmental solutions, that is not universally true. And the converse, that people who are against proposed environmental solutions take that stance simply because they want to avoid taxes is even more false. And insulting.

--Pete

[Ashock]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2004093_pf.html

Hackers steal electronic data from top climate research center
Scientists' e-mails deriding skeptics of warming become public

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 21, 2009



Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world's foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

University officials confirmed the data breach, which involves more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents, but said they could not say how many of the stolen items were authentic.

"We are aware that information from a server in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the statement says. "We are extremely concerned that personal information about individuals may have been compromised. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm what proportion of this material is genuine."

Michael E. Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said in a telephone interview from Paris that skeptics are "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious."

In one e-mail from 1999, the center's director, Phil Jones, alludes to one of Mann's articles in the journal Nature and writes, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

But Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said this and other exchanges show researchers have colluded to establish the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.

"It is clear that some of the 'world's leading climate scientists,' as they are always described, are more dedicated to promoting the alarmist political agenda than in scientific research," said Ebell, whose group is funded in part by energy companies. "Some of the e-mails that I have read are blatant displays of personal pettiness, unethical conniving, and twisting the science to support their political position."

In one e-mail, Ben Santer, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, offered to beat up skeptic Pat Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, out of sympathy for Jones.

Neither Jones nor Santer could be reached for comment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not that this is definitive proof or anything like that, but it's more than comes out of the mainstream media. There's lots of evidence to the contrary of the current "global warming" craze. You just have to look for it and not close your eyes. Don't see what you believe, but believe what you see.

[ShadowHM]

And the converse, that people who are against proposed environmental solutions take that stance simply because they want to avoid taxes is even more false. And insulting.

--Pete

I will agree that it *may* be false. And that it is insulting to assume that there is a direct co-relation. However, it is incontrovertible that *some* of those who refuse to countenance any environmental-improvement legislation do so solely because they do not want to pay the tax bill that goes with them. I have debated that very topic with some of them (and found that it was prudent to agree to avoid the topic thereafter, lest it poison other aspects of our relationship).

[--Pete]

Hi,

And the converse, that people who are against proposed environmental solutions take that stance simply because they want to avoid taxes is even more false.

I will agree that it *may* be false. And that it is insulting to assume that there is a direct co-relation. However, it is incontrovertible that *some* of those who refuse to countenance any environmental-improvement legislation do so solely because they do not want to pay the tax bill that goes with them. I have debated that very topic with some of them (and found that it was prudent to agree to avoid the topic thereafter, lest it poison other aspects of our relationship).

You are correct. I intended to imply: "And the converse, that all people who are against proposed environmental solutions take that stance <strike>simply</strike> only because they want to avoid taxes is even more false."

I've just got to learn to say what I mean. :P

--Pete

[Jester]

Not that this is definitive proof or anything like that, but it's more than comes out of the mainstream media.

... he says, quoting from the Washington Post.

There's lots of evidence to the contrary of the current "global warming" craze. You just have to look for it and not close your eyes. Don't see what you believe, but believe what you see.

No, there really isn't. What exists are bits and pieces (the latest series having been quite illegally hacked out of people's private, University e-mail accounts) that, when you cut them out of context and pin them up on a board labelled "The Great Global Warming Conspiracy," sort of make sense if you hold your head a bit to the side and squint really hard. The "Competitive Enterprise Institute" and its ilk are more than happy to support this kind of specious analysis wherever it pops up, for obvious reasons.

Or, alternately, you can look at the preponderance of scientific opinion, and come to a more reasonable conclusion - that anthropogenic warming due primarily to CO2 emissions is a well-established scientific fact. You can quibble about the levels and minutiae, but the basic story is very clear up to this point.

Some of these e-mails are "blatant displays of personal pettiness" because they are *private* e-mails, in which people joke around, speak their minds, and let their guard down in ways that would not pass muster in public. Nobody was ever punched. As for the "twisting of science", the same basic standards of evidence apply - if the denialists have a real case, let them fight it out in the journals, and let their critics fight back. What they have now is a bunch of unsubstantiated accusations based on out-of-context stolen e-mails; what they need is a solid scientific case.

-Jester

[Jester]

People consume their income up to a point until they feel comfort, then (for most people) the ratio of consumption decreases and investment increases. That investment is what builds infrastructure, including pollution free power plants, and pays the wages of the employees who work at the Green power plant. That is normally how it works, unless you subscribe to the socialist model.

Wealth is, in the end, what wealth can buy - if it couldn't buy anything, it wouldn't be wealth. Investment involves the creation of new stuff for people to buy. In an ideal world, we'd have all sorts of green technology, and no pollution, and we could just go on getting richer and richer and consuming more and more, with no limit but the size of the universe. I look forward to this world.

But, obviously, we do live in a world with pollution, and investment money pays the wages of coal plant employees just the same as green power employees. Those wages then get spent on heavily subsidized, highly polluting food, on fuel for cars, for the coal power and gas heat they just spent their day producing, and so on. Without a steep price on carbon, or some shiny new technology, increasing wealth increases pollution. That's just reality.

This is every bit as true for socialism as for capitalism. You can dream up your ideology, but you can't wish away the basic facts of production and consumption. The Soviet Union was an environmental nightmare, and its death was one of the few positive (if unintentional) steps towards lowering worldwide emissions.

You have very little idea what you are talking about then. 6 billion people would deforest the planet in a very short time, while filling the atmosphere with many tons more carbon particulates, sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides, creosote, and various other volatile organic compounds. Also, again due to incomplete combustion, open wood fires produce more polycyclic organic matter which includes potential carcinogens like benzopyrenes.

You're probably right, that we have overshot the population that could be sustained exclusively on wood alone. I figure we've got about an acre and a half of wood per person, and that's just not going to cut it. We would, of course, plant a whole lot more if it were our only source of fuel, and we'd use it more efficiently. Adding other biofuel sources like cow paddies would probably help us out some. The air quality would be frighteningly poor (I would not recommend this world!), but we'd be carbon neutral. Thankfully, we don't have any reason to live on wood alone - we understand what nuclear energy is, we understand what wind and solar are, we know how to access geothermal heating and power, and how to run a hydroelectric dam. We're not returning to the dark ages any time soon, even in the maximal zero-carbon scenario.

When will the next nuclear plant be built in the US?

Dunno. I'd like it to have been yesterday, but you can't always get what you want. However, you *could* build one tomorrow.

You don't think high birth rate countries are polluters, but no one is really measuring now are they? It would be true that they contribute less CO2, but I think when it comes to pollutants and environmental protection, the wealthier nations are doing more to protect their soil, air, and water. Not enough, but still they can afford to do more than the impoverished nations.

CO2? I'm pretty sure they are measuring that... Other pollutants? It probably depends, but if they're not affecting the entire globe, I care a lot less. Global warming is so named for a reason. Local pollution sucks, but a polluted lake or bad air quality in Venezuela is not going to dry out farmland in Pakistan. Greenhouse gases on the other hand...

-Jester

[kandrathe]

You might want to go back and look at the link I posted earlier. Also, you might want to review heat pumps and geothermal generation. They are considerably different concepts, united mostly by both being the subjects of thermodynamics.

They seem nearly the same to me, other than the use of water and steam for turbines. There are such things as low temperature turbines, which can use a low boiling point fluid, and run in a closed loop with a partial vacuum aiding in lowering the boiling point. The same principles and components apply though, heat source, compressor, evaporator, condenser, turbine, generator.

[--Pete]

Hi,

They seem nearly the same to me, other than the use of water and steam for turbines. There are such things as low temperature turbines, which can use a low boiling point fluid, and run in a closed loop with a partial vacuum aiding in lowering the boiling point. The same principles and components apply though, heat source, compressor, evaporator, condenser, turbine, generator.

Heat pumps move thermal energy from a region of low temperature to one of high. Geothermal generators use the thermal energy of the earth to heat a fluid to run a turbine to make electricity. The heat pump uses electricity, the generator makes it. Perhaps you are confusing geothermal generators with geothermal heat pumps, which are very similar to heat pumps since they are one.

--Pete

[eppie]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not that this is definitive proof or anything like that, but it's more than comes out of the mainstream media. There's lots of evidence to the contrary of the current "global warming" craze. You just have to look for it and not close your eyes. Don't see what you believe, but believe what you see.

Yes this also reached the dutch media. Mainly de telegraaf, a newspaper famous for being 'wrong' in WW2 (collaborating with the Germans) (I know this is a bit godwinish, but I think it is important for you non-dutch people to know what kind of paper we are talking about.

I think that the media attention regarding climate skepticism is far more biased than those evil mainstream media you are talking about.
Two politicians complained with our minister; one from the PVV (Wilders' party) without education and one from the right wing liberals who studied law.
Further the mentioned a climate skeptic....a geophysicist who always can say his strange opinions in cases like this. I discussed with this guy over the internet once (on a forum).....this guy is 'known' as a kind of skeptic expert. During the discussions he posted links which were stating more or less the opposite of what he wanted to communicate 'climate hoax!!!' So after I told him I read the article (which of course he didn't expect me to do) he didn't react anymore.

So here you have a news fact (stolen emails) and this paper (the biggest in Holland) gives the word to three non experts.....I guess you have to try something when you are wrong.

[kandrathe]

I guess you have to try something when you are wrong.

The e-mails, from what I've seen and heard only suggest that certain climate scientists have colluded to misrepresent their findings, and shut down debate. They are two very serious charges against scientists who within the academe should welcome debate, and should endeavor to represent the truth as they know it. The politicization of the climate issue (as with many issues) has shut down rational investigation, forced scientists to choose sides, and seriously hindered academic freedom. People are being forced to choose politically correctness over scientific method in order to save their reputations and livelihood. This is unfortunately not new in the realms of science.

Here in your judgmental analysis you denigrate the messenger for a mistake that occurred over 50 years ago, you dismiss the opinions of ministers from their associations, and you dismiss a geophysicist as a climate skeptic. But, never once did you discuss the merits of their positions. Shouldn't we all be skeptics lest we devolve into wool bearing bleating animals?

[kandrathe]

This is an argument you read a lot on internet forums. Do you really think that people wanting grant money chose to work on climate science?
There has always been much more money from industrial funding in this topic, both direct (work for a company instead of a university) as indirect (oil industry has always been a big sponsor of chemistry and physics research. Only these last years a bigger grant wave has come up for climate related research......but that was after the human caused greenhouse effect was for 90% sure (and we are at what? 95% now).
Every high profile scientist that goes against this theory ensures himself of a well paid job at Exxon or of course as adviser for the GOP.

I don't believe that scientists think about the politics of the academe before they become embroiled in it, nor would they think about the potential pit falls of taking money from outside the academe whether it be from government or corporations. Not everyone is motivated by money. In fact, I would say that according to Maslow, once basic needs are covered then peer acceptance and self actualization are greater motivators.

[Crusader]

Here in your judgmental analysis you denigrate the messenger for a mistake that occurred over 50 years ago, you dismiss the opinions of ministers from their associations, and you dismiss a geophysicist as a climate skeptic. But, never once did you discuss the merits of their positions. Shouldn't we all be skeptics lest we devolve into wool bearing bleating animals?

Agreed. One should not attack De Telegraaf on it's traiterous past, but rather on how it operates today. And please, don't think this is a respectable newspaper. It's more a poor man's newspaper which leans more to a papparazi-backed tabloid which brings biased "news" and interesting tidbits like pictures of dancing dogs then actual news. Oh, and two reporters stole national secrets once and published them, then whined when afterwards the secret service monitored their every move and arrested them. Eventually they got away with it thanks to judges who thought their privacy had been compromised by the secret service and therefore the state couldn't sue. :blink:Really now, you don't steal national secrets and publish them, no matter what the info, that's high treason and could have landed our country in trouble internationally. But they don't think of consequences, they just want a scoop and their five minutes of fame, to hell withthe consequences for the entire nation.

But yea, it's that kind of newspaper. Don't think they cleaned up their act since WW2. Filthy collaborators.

[kandrathe]

But yea, it's that kind of newspaper. Don't think they cleaned up their act since WW2. Filthy collaborators.

Alright. I'll take your word for it. They are crap. :)

Here is a better source for you.

[Ashock]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdel...global-warming/



Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 20th, 2009

522 Comments Comment on this article

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because – though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room – he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:

Manipulation of evidence:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Suppression of evidence:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:

Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.

Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

Hadley CRU has form in this regard. In September – I wrote the story up here as “How the global warming industry is based on a massive lie” – Hadley CRU’s researchers were exposed as having “cherry-picked” data in order to support their untrue claim that global temperatures had risen higher at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the last millenium. Hadley CRU was also the organisation which – in contravention of all acceptable behaviour in the international scientific community – spent years withholding data from researchers it deemed unhelpful to its cause. This matters because Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude. Its HadCrut record is one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the IPCC.

I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true,it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

[Jester]

Oh, my. If James Delingpole has turned against AGW, whatever are we to do! Surely the final nail in the coffin. Next thing you know, the sun will turn yellow, the sky blue, and the grass green!

If anyone is actually interested in the discussion over the content and nature of the emails, Gavin Schmidt over at Realclimate has been fielding questions since this came out. Some of his are among the mails taken, and his responses usually give quite a bit of revealing context.

Also: the official statement from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, complete with explanation about the "trick" to "hide the decline" - referring to the post-1960 decline in the tree ring proxy record - by replacing it with the known instrumental temperature record. Decide for yourself if this troubles your overall interpretation of global warming, but this is definitively *not* hiding a "decline" in modern temperatures.

But if you cut the quote completely out of context and write incendiary newspaper articles, it looks damning. Which is, of course, why they only give you a single sentence. Much easier to get outraged about if you leave your readers to imagine for themselves.

-Jester

Afterthought: Mr. Delingpole also follows Watts in confusing the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia with the Hadley Center (he says AKA - it is not.) They contribute to the same global temperature series (HadCRUT3), but are quite separate institutions.

[eppie]

Oh, my. If James Delingpole has turned against AGW, whatever are we to do! Surely the final nail in the coffin. Next thing you know, the sun will turn yellow, the sky blue, and the grass green!

Hahaha, yes I can also see why Ashock quotes this guy.....he is the author of the book 'Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work'.

I mean, we all know what you stand for, but please don't make it too obvious when discussing here. Did you only for 1 second think that somebody would take the quoted article seriously?

Maybe you shoudl try quoting somebody that actually knows what jhe is talking about, not some right wing conspiracy theory freak, who only practices politics, and not science.
The only reasons these guys can write what they do is because the public want to think there is a climate hoax, because the public loves conspiracy theories and because the public doesn't understand the science behind it.

[kandrathe]

You do have to admit that the evidence of around 42 leading climate scientists colluding to prevent research from being even considered for peer review is pretty damning. And then, their argument was, "Show me the peer reviewed research." Well, hey, there wasn't much because you barred it from getting into any publications. Then, when one journal's editor let slip through something not in step, they colluded to black mail, and punish that publication unless they changed their review board.

We all know that this is what happens, but now the evidence of how rampant the practice has become is right in our faces. You can research whatever you like, however, only if your conclusions support our political agenda will your research ever get published.