Continuation of the older threads. Please scan those (even briefly) to see whether your point has already been dealt with. Let me know if there is something worth pulling from the comments to the main post.
In the meantime, read about why peer-review is a necessary but not sufficient condition for science to be worth looking at. Also, before you conclude that the emails have any impact on the science, read about the six easy steps that mean that CO2 (and the other greenhouse gases) are indeed likely to be a problem, and think specifically how anything in the emails affect them.
Update: The piece by Peter Kelemen at Columbia in Popular Mechanics is quite sensible, even if I don’t agree in all particulars.
Further update: Nature’s editorial.
Further, further update: Ben Santer’s mail (click on quoted text), the Mike Hulme op-ed, and Kevin Trenberth.
I think the operative phrase here is “true or not”. This is precisely why the CA and WUWT have been screaming “fraud” for years. Because people like you will come along and say “true or not” …
As the old saying goes … when did you stop beating your wife? True or not … I’m skeptical that you’re a decent human being. That’s all it takes, isn’t it?
Comment by dhogaza — 3 December 2009 @ 4:20 PM
OK, so I am walking down the street and some guy screams at me to get out of the way of the bus that is going to hit me. Problem is, I don’t see any bus. Maybe he knows something about a bus that is due, but it does not change the fact that I don’t see the bus, and nobody around me sees the bus. Some guy comes up and says, “I don’t believe you, show me why you say that”
Bus warning guy shows a bus schedule but all the times are lined out and new times are written in, all the while yelling at other people about the bus coming to hit us all. Now this bus schedule, its handwritten on a paper grocery bag and nobody seems to have a real one. The other guys says a bus might be coming, but its on schedule and not out to kill us. A huge debate ensues between bus guy and question guy with some folks believing one or the other. I don’t know bus schedules, I only know there are buses that come down the road. So I don’t know which guy is correct. Bus guy has lots of folks yelling about mad buses coming to kill everyone, but I still don’t see a bus. Yeah, there may be a bus, but I see them all the time and they never killed anyone before. Who do I believe? When the killer bus people start calling me an idiot for wondering who the heck is right, my reaction is not going to be favorable to them. Sorry, its human nature. Is there a killer bus, I am no closer to knowing and killer bus guy was just shown talking about his trick to show the times on bus schedule ‘adjusted’ certain way. It might be innocent, but lemme tell you, it just makes me wonder if all these killer bus people have lost their minds. And no, the average person is probably not going to go digging through the history of bus traffic on this road. They are going to say ‘aint never seen no killer buses yet’ and move on.
I’m sorry the world is not perfect and people are trying to discredit your work, but, well, tough. You are making what appear to many to be extreme claims. Yeah, you don’t see it that way, but it isn’t about your perception or you knowledge of the facts, its about theirs. Life sucks, and if your right, it appears you are going to have to go to extremes to overcome the perception in many that your just ‘crazy killer bus people’.
If I was just a ‘denialist’ I would be celebrating this fiasco, fact is though its a dangerous thing indeed. The field of science has suffered a tremendous black eye, deserved or not. Yup, there it is, that true or not thing. I am sorry I dare to question or doubt the words of people who appear to have been playing fast with the numbers, but millions are not even willing to give you the benefit of the doubt I am willing to give. You can say it isn’t true all you want, but it’s going to take a lot more then that to really get people to really trust you about these things.
Its your challenge, good luck with it. I am glad it is not me in that position. On one hand, I hope that if your right you manage to get the truth out there, but I also hope your wrong about AGW because the consequences are dire.
Max says ,”What is also ‘settled science’ is that it has not warmed since the end of the 20th century despite continued all-time record increase in CO2, but has cooled instead by around 0.1°C.” Utter bull. As has been documented here, competent statistical analysis of temperature trends over the last decade show continued warming. Now, you may offer a different statistical analysis, and make some claim for competence, but you will at best be in a minority of those with such analyses on offer. So it’s purely bunk for you to claim that your (minority, variant) analysis of the statistics constitutes a “settled science” consensus. Since you’re obviously not an idiot, charitably what should we call you when you make that claim?
Chris MCV:
“If the books were cooked though, it is my deepest wish to see all the parties involved burn for it.”
Are you willing to express the same sentiment about the anti-climate scientists, bloggers, and such?
#197
“Certainly none of the graphs of global temperatures, sea level rise or ice melt yet show any catastrophic change.”
Nor does the science suggest we would see ‘catastrophic’ sea level rise this century.
So what’s it to be? Act based on the science, or deny the science and wait for 50 years and then say “Ooops, those pesky scientists were right after all!”
Let’s be clear. The inertia in the system means that if we don’t get emissions declining before 2030, CO2 is going to pass 550ppm. That commits you to 3 degrees, and there is nothing (save extremely dubious and potentially catastrophic interference with the atmosphere via geoengineering) you can do about it.
You approach is akin to saying “I refuse to believe this is a minefield, despite the mine clearance expert telling me it is. But I /will/ believe it’s a minefield when I step on a mine. So I don’t need his advice.”
Re #239 and the tar baby.
Like it or not, you are already entangled. It does not matter if you stumbled on your own ethics or tripped over a skeptics trap, people only see the break in stride. I want as many minds on this trying to figure it out as possible, so I am glad people are looking closely at this. I want the data checked and double checked until there is no doubt one way or another. I don’t want to hear that allowing people to check your data is a waste of time and not worth your time when my taxes are paying for your work and it is my future and my childrens futures that are at stake. That is just not good enough. At least I am fair enough to tell you exactly how I feel and why I feel that way, many are just going to tell you to take a hike.
What I get from the stolen-emails controversy so far is:
– Some opponents of climate protection not only lie and cheat but also steal.
– A well-funded and -planned campaign of climate disinformation continues both to distort and deny climate science and to try to discredit the scientific process.
– Many reporters and editors remain ill-informed about climate-science fundamentals and about how science works.
– Robust discussions are a vital tool for sorting truth from error.
– Peer review is not an infallible error-detector, but beats none.
– Some people, including some scientists, can be untactful and indiscreet, especially in communications they think are private. These human traits are unrelated to the merits of their views.
– Ambiguities can easily be taken out of context and out of proportion to reverse their intended meaning. A skilled effort devoted to this deception now threatens scientific and policy leaders with political harm for frank expression. They may learn greater care and discretion in their choice of words, but their public duty demands not less but even more clarity, candor, and transparency. Efforts to intimidate through falsehood, like the current media circus over the stolen e-mails, continue to merit merit exposure and contempt.
None of this is new. In time it will pass, and climate science may well be the stronger for it. As we learn more about who stole and published the emails at this sensitive time, how, and why, climate protection too may benefit from greater insight into the manufactured-doubt industry.
What seems to be missing from this conversation, though, is an appreciation of why this flap doesn’t matter: not only because climate science rests on such numerous, diverse, and independent lines of evidence and inference that its findings remain highly robust, but also because *whether you believe climate change is real and threatening or not, we should do the same things anyway just to save money (because saving fuel is cheaper than buying fuel, and productive forests are worth more than dead logs) and to improve our security.*
In other words, what you do about energy shouldn’t depend on your opinion about climate science, nor about whether you most care about prosperity, security, or environment. If the public debate about climate focuses on outcomes, not motives, it can reach broad consensus. And if in Copenhagen we start to correct a pernicious sign error—assuming from economic theory that climate protection is costly, rather than learning from business experience that it’s profitable (see http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/C05-05_MoreProfitLessCarbon)—then we can shift the conversation from cost, burden, and sacrifice to profits, jobs, and competitive advantage. This sweetens the politics enough to melt any remaining resistance faster than the glaciers.
I hope more climatologists will add this concept to their normal remarks about climate science. The science was and remains clear, but for other compelling reasons, we should do the same things even if it weren’t.
Maybe researches should copy right their e-mails.
Re 189 SecularAnimist:
SA, not sure if you’re aware but Gavin is a fairly experienced climate scientist who is probably fully aware of the science and issues surrounding AGW.
What I understand by his comments about the “settled science” stuff is in relation to the political / media line that “we know exactly how it all works, there is no question remaining to be answered and no more knowledge is needed”. While that may be good as a way of getting it across to the general public, it’s not something that any decent scientist would entertain – regardless of their informed position regarding AGW.
Firstly, assuming that AGW is a fact, there are still huge questions about how bad it might become, how much and in what ways “nature” might respond to negate or exacerbate it and what the scientifically (as opposed to politically) best ways to deal with it are. That means that there is more science to do.
Secondly, I imagine that he would even accept that there is always a (small but real) possibility that the trends which indicate AGW just might be caused by a currently unknown natural forcing. Just because they can’t explain current warming without a human effect doesn’t, in some Sherlock Holmes type way, actually prove that there is no other possible explanation. Until a few years ago, medical science was quite clear that ulcers were a result of stress, then two guys proved that at least some were caused by bacteria and saved an awful lot of people suffering.
That’s how science works, and why considered scepticism (as opposed to unthinking denial) is important even when there is a strong existing consensus – I’d certainly rather develop an ulcer now than 20 years ago!
Unfortunately, headline statements that “the science is settled” seem to have been popular over the past few years. I honestly can’t remember ever seeing an actual scientist quoted as saying it but there have been plenty of headlines to the effect that “scientists say it’s settled”.
“Yes, SA: As you point out, the greenhouse theory itself is “settled science” as is the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that it has warmed around 0.6°C over the 20th century (assuming the temperature records are correct), that humans have emitted CO2 and that atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased since measurements started at Mauna Loa around 1957.
What is also “settled science” is that it has not warmed since the end of the 20th century despite continued all-time record increase in CO2, but has cooled instead by around 0.1°C (same caveat on the temperature record as above).”
And now it seems the assumption that the temp records put forward are accurate is basically impossible to test for with the original data set not being available, and adjustments not able to be examined.
I would think someone could easily pick up some funding in the current political climate to start a large scale project to reconstruct the temperature records and all involved both deniers and believers could support such an effort done openly and transparently with a 100% solid audit trail.
Who would object?
Jim Bouldin (239)
The “Tar Baby” analogy is not that far off. Wiki recommends avoiding contact or separation.
Problem is, it is too late “not to touch” the “tar baby”, Jim. It has been “touched” and is “sticking”. It will not “separate” by ignoring it or by simply saying that it does not matter.
And “tricking” Br’er Fox to toss Jones, Mann et al. into the briar patch won’t work, either.
Believe me, the only thing that will work is full disclosure, honesty and transparency.
Max
I have been slowly reading through the hacked emails. In general, they seem pretty mundane, but one in particular raised alarm bells with me, namely http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=424&filename=1092418712.txt I’m not sure if I am reading the emails correctly (or in the correct order), and they could of course be fake. That said, one possible interpretation is that a paper under review has been shared outside the usual review process. In fact, I’m struggling to find an interpretation other than that, but I’m entirely willing to put that down to a lack of familarity with the field. Any clarifications gratefully accepted!
Unfortunately, those politicians and media entities that speak out on global warming will be taken by the average person to be speaking for the position. The scientists have indeed stated the possible errors and such, but others do say it is all settled. Its not fair to them, but it is how it is perceived.
#244
The science is sufficiently ‘settled’ for us to act. (Not that I’m accusing you of denying that)
The threat is there. We ‘know’ it’s real. We certainly know a lot less about the impacts but what we do know suggests that they are very bad. We know it costs less to avoid the problem now than try to fix it later (Stern Review).
We also know (see latest IEA reports) that our current use of energy is unsustainable in a shorter period of time than the climate problem (peak oil in two decades or less?! Yikes!!)
And we know we have the technologies to start to make a difference, and the skills and resources to improve those technologies to make a massive difference.
so while I agree there’s more science to be done, it is now time for action. (It was in 1992). I’m off to Copenhagen tomorrow. That’s rather exciting. I hope we get something good done, or our children are going to be really pissed off with us in 30 years.
Gavin, here are also links to some good, fact-based reporting on the hack which you may want to add to the updates:
Interview with Jim Hanson: http://www.newsweek.com/id/224178
Two excellent articles by Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1392
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1389
It’s a relief to finally some cogent, logical reporting come out on this, although the first Wunder Blog was within a day or two of the hack.
“Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.”
manacker — 3 December 2009 @ 4:40 PM quoting Rasmussen Reports
Do you think they will get the fate they expect, or the fate they deserve? How about their chilluns ‘n’ gran’chilluns?
I don’t have and won’t have children, so this question is of academic interest only to me. One of my curmudgeonly friends is fond of saying “evolution in action” in response to reports of stupidity leading to adverse consequences.
In response to #233 :
Gavin, are you referring to the same Spencer and Christy who RealClimate (21 May 2008) charged with committing “serial errors in the data analysis”?
link :
Amory Lovins, who is one of my personal heroes in this world, wrote: “None of this is new. In time it will pass, and climate science may well be the stronger for it.”
That may be true. The question is, what good will it do us to have “stronger climate science” in a world where greed-driven dishonesty, denial and obstruction have succeeded in delaying action until anthropogenic global warming has made the collapse of the Earth’s biosphere irrevocable?
Will there be some satisfaction in having science that is “strong” enough to permit us to observe, document and fully understand in great detail the process of extinction of most life on Earth, including the human species, while it is unfolding before our eyes?
As commenter Silk alludes to above, the time for action is not “now”. The time for action was 1992, if not earlier. By that time the science was already sufficiently “settled” that we knew that urgent action was needed to quickly reduce GHG emissions. Instead we allowed emissions to not only increase but to accelerate for another generation.
Climate scientists now understand that the situation is much worse than they thought it was even a few years ago.
And I will confidently predict that within a very few more years, they will come to understand that the situation is far worse than they can even conceive of now.
The fact is, the deniers, delayers and obstructors have succeeded. Their triumph will be trillions of dollars in profits for the fossil fuel corporations, and the extinction of the human species.
Dr. Jeff Masters’ latest piece is one of the best I’ve seen yet. I highly recommend it. He promises another entitled “don’t shoot the messenger” over the weekend.
Just for comparison, here’s a comment about a “war” in the Economics field — that sounds _very_ familiar. Apparently they don’t consider one another’s methods reliable:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/12/the-civil-war-in-development-economics.html
“Response: Where did you get the idea that CO2 is doing 90% of what it can? CO2 forcing is logarithmic but that doesn’t converge – the more CO2 there is the more of an effect it will have. Look at Venus if you don’t believe me. The explanation I gave you is the reason why the water vapour overlap is a red herring. There is more discussion here. – gavin”
The invocation of Venus is a red herring. Venus has an atmosphere that is 98% CO2. The conentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is 0.038%. Also the geology and planetary dynamics is completely different from Earths.
Being logarithmic, the ability of co2 to absorb more radiation declines with increasing concentration. That is why you need your preponderance of positive feedbacks to amplify the co2 influence on climate forcing.
[Response: The real world is what it is and doesn’t care if someone ‘needs’ it to be any particular way. And the logarithmic nature of the CO2 forcing is something that has been known and used for decades – at least back to Plass and maybe Arrenhius, and is why we have always talked about the response to doubled CO2 and not the warming per ppmv. Pretending that this is some new discovery that has only just been discovered might work elsewhere, but here it just makes you look silly. -gavin]
Joe (245) wrote:
“I honestly can’t remember ever seeing an actual scientist quoted as saying it but there have been plenty of headlines to the effect that “scientists say it’s settled”.
At a December 1997 Kyoto press conference, climate scientist and IPCC Chair from 1997-2002, Robert Watson, was asked about the growing number of climate scientists who challenge the conclusions of the UN on AGW. He responded, “The science is settled, [and] we’re not going to reopen it here.”
http://sovereignty.net/p/clim/kyotorpt.htm
This is apparently the first time a climate scientist made this statement.
US President Bill Clinton said at a June 1997 hearing, “The science is clear and compelling”. At the same hearing US VP Al Gore agreed that the “debate is over”.
But these two are not scientists, so I guess it was Robert Watson who first said this.
Max
“It is not the CRU’s job to curate the raw datasets – that is the role of the National Met. Services. The fact that the data exists somewhere else is precisely the point. – gavin”
No. It is not the point. There is no audit trail for CRU data products precisely because they discarded the raw data provided to them. Your argument is toally spurious. CRU should have maintained the original data for no other reason than to provide a linkage to it’s “value added” products.
Joe (245) became Joe (258).
“….an effort done openly and transparently with a 100% solid audit trail.
Who would object?”
John MacQueen — 3 December 2009 @ 6:13 PM
Oh, I could think of 40 billion reasons why Exxon/Mobil might object. Or Peabody Coal. Or CEI. Or the Heartland institute. They want to be able to control the debate; which is why they vilify the IPCC, and will attack any new group that threatens their constituencies, regardless of how open, transparent, and well audited it is.
I too am frustrated with Pat Michaels. However, if it were not for that frustration I may not have come to the conclusions I reached when first as an interested person began reading on climate change several years ago.
I read some of Mr. Michaels’s cutsey stories and found examples of how he misrepresented facts. For example let’s discuss Pat Michaels from the Exxon-funded Cato Institute featured on a video I saw back then.
Several years back, Michaels wrote that the average summer daytime temperature at Kalispell, MT, which he claimed was the station nearest Grinnell Glacier, had not changed. He was criticizing Al Gore and Max Baucus for going to Grinnell Glacier to point out that global warming was causing glaciers to melt. I looked into the claim—even called the Park’s glaciologist, Dan Fagre, who seems to shun politics.
I can’t show the slide here of temperatures in the area because it is not copying into the comment section. However, it you call me I’ll email it. 406-696-2842.
Michaels’ data and his methodology were faulty. Drawing data from one point only, like Kalispell, is akin to asking one person what he thinks and then reporting the results as a survey. Actually, even using one point like Kalispell, the data shows a temperature rise. That data was available on the web at the time Michaels wrote his article. He ignored it. As depicted on this slide, the data also indicate a rise for the region. That data includes the station at Babb, MT, which (contrary to what Michaels claimed) is closer to Grinnell than Kalispell. And the average includes data from the other stations in the box. Therefore it is more statistically significant than Michael’s approach. Would you call Michael’s approach “a triumph of science over superstition?” That wording was used in praise of Michael’s book by a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which having received at least $960,000 in funding from Exxon-Mobil has found a way to put a tiger in its think-tank. Michaels should resign his research position at the University of Virginia.
The unassailable fact is that three-quarters of the earth’s fresh water is tied up in the world’s 160,000 glaciers, most of which are melting—one cause of sea level rise.
In Montana, we do not have to take the IPCC’s word for it. Many of us have watched Grinnell Glacier dwindle. We’ve hiked to it as kids and adults. Gary Braasch’s photos are convincing views of how 90 years of melting since 1911 has taken its toll.
We know that when Glacier National Park was created in 1910 it held approximately 150 glaciers. Now, according to Dan Fagre, the Park’s glaciologist, fewer than 27, greatly shrunken glaciers remain—down from 50 glaciers in 1968. I have not spoken with Fagre since the 2005 melt was measured, so the number might be less than 27. Fagre was recently quoted as saying that some glacieral fed streams in the Park have gone dry or underground in late summer—including one that runs by the Lodge on Lake McDonald. We can call it “Used-To-Be Glacier Park” by 2022 when the ice is all gone. How will that affect Montana’s number two industry, tourism? Maybe folks will travel to Montana to view photos of how the Park used to look.
247:
From what I understand CRU had some original data which they recalibrated (i.e. changed in some way) but then deleted the original data. In terms of traceability this is a major problem especially if people are going to question the validity of their results.
If they had the original data they could run the data processing and re-create the existing data set, as long as they had not ‘lost’ the computer-code as well.
As a supposed world class centre they should have kept full traceability between original data and their processed results together with historical versions of the data processing source code etc.
If CRU cannot repeat the process of turning the original data into the current datasets, then their current datasets should be treated as suspect – there is no accurate way to determine the amount of change introduced by data processing i.e. how are the original values reflected in the current numbers .
No matter how anyone spins it: no traceability = no reliability.
CRU appear to have completely ignored basic practices and if so they deserve all the flack they are going to get.
Jim and Hank, #239- Tar Baby is a really good way to put it. I’ve been engaged in futile arguments with deniers for years, especially since 2007 on Dot Earth.
I fully understand why Jones and others reacted the way they did. It makes you a little nuts after about the fourteenth paid blogger says “it’s cooling”, “CO2 is a minor issue”, etc. After a while you realize that they have not been discussing this in good faith- they may even know the realities, but their goals are obfuscation and distraction. That’s why we feel full of tar- by participating in nonsensical arguments, you feel soiled and even ridiculous yourself.
Nice to hear from Amory. I agree that the context of energy development that is both clean and cost effective has been neglected in the climate discussion. The problem is this: even apparently reputable power cost analyses (ethree, Lazard) include difficult assumptions. Utilities and CST companies consider feasibility and even negotiated prices proprietary. Scaling up sometimes means more unit cost.
A lot of unknowns, in other words. But if CST or geothermal can really go head to head with coal- wind is pretty close already- large upcoming deployments will answer that question.
re 264 Shirley:
My only reservation on the hacker theory is the continued assertion that it was to “a backup mail server” – suggesting a dedicated server.
It seems unlikely that the code and data files would have been on such a server and, if a hack to a dedicated mail server gave access to other areas, then someone in the University’s IT department should probably be reading the job pages about now.
“If the books were cooked though, it is my deepest wish to see all the parties involved burn for it.”
Are you willing to express the same sentiment about the anti-climate scientists, bloggers, and such?
Bloggers, no, they are not paid (unless you can prove otherwise). If ‘anti’ scientists cooked the books, then yes, absolutely they deserve the same. The big difference, these guys are not private researchers, they are working in public institution and are paid by tax dollars. They have to answer to me as a tax payer. A scientist working for exxon does not. No its not fair, but until I am a big shareholder, they do not work for me.
There’s a pretty pointed reference to the UAH satellite glitch in the Santer email. Borne of a bit of exasperation?
It amuses me when sceptics decide the UAH record is most reliable – not because they know anything about how it works, or its history of corrections, but because they like its data better.
manacker (229) — This decade is the warmest on record; use any of the four major global surface temperature products.
The fact that you are wrong about this small, easily checked, matter should suggest to readers here that other of your assertions may well also be flawed.
@Joe @55 If you have looked at the data – fort he raw data – then you should know how many stations are involved. But you don’t seem to know, and offer suggested figures as examples.
Has anyone ascertained as yet whether or not the CRU emails were stolen by an outside hacker or released by an inside whistleblower?
I have seen blog opinions on this (which point to an inside whistleblower) but nothing definitive.
RE #261
You seem shocked at the very act of sharing the reviewed manuscript with other people apart from those specified by the editor. Do you really think that kind of misdemeanour is special to climatology? It may be against the rules by it probably does not normally do much harm. Each example is a special case and I am not going to comment any more on that one.
Michael Schlesinger is in favour of taking the sharing one step further and having open on line reviewing:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/more-on-the-climate-files-and-climate-trends/
but that would solve some problems while introducing a very serious new one i.e. that junior reviewers without tenure might be scared to highlight faults in the work of a senior colleague who might be his or her future prospective boss.
[Response: Huh? If I can call the bus station and get the schedule whenever I want, then what difference does it make if I lost the handout I picked up last time I was there? You have got it completely backwards – keeping multiple copies of duplicate data is a recipe for dataset drift and confusion – look at the variations in the GHCN data for stations that had been digitised at different times. It is not the CRU’s job to curate the raw datasets – that is the role of the National Met. Services. The fact that the data exists somewhere else is precisely the point. – gavin]
Huh!?! The correct analogy would be that you would need to call a different phone number for every line in the schedule to put together a complete schedule yourself. Then you would truly realize what difference it makes if you lost the handout. While it’s not the CRU’s job to curate the raw data, they would have been doing the community a great service by not deleting or losing that data, or better yet, passing it to someone who would be willing to curate it. I think that speaks volumes about the CRU’s commitment to the science.
Please have a read.
To the skeptics’ argument that the “climate does not show warming for the last 10 years” I offer this logical exercise:
1) IF you think the climate has “stagnated” during the last 10 years
2) AND IF you think climate is within its natural variability and is unpredictable
3) AND IF you think 10 years is a significant period to conclude about climate’s trend
THEN why during this 10 years of stagnation there hasn’t been any _significant_ cooling trend? IF you believe 2) and 3) are true, the climate should have followed the random walk and declined the temperature closer to the alledged thousands of years mean temperature already.
The only reasonable response from the critics should be exactly what is not often heard from them: 10 years is too short period to tell anything about the climate development. This is contrary to their original claim (see the beginning).
Gavin, thanks for posting all of this stuff over the past few days. You’re one of the few people who’s taken an honest approach to this issue and provided good information about what is actually going on. I appreciate it.
On the other hand, some of our best op-ed sections make me want to do this.
5rtf4ujih8kookiuyh7jrf
(that’s what happens when you hit your head against the keyboard)
Dr. Gavin Schmidt,
You are a busy man and intelligent. I do think that carbon dioxide does produce some warming of the Earth via IR absorption. But from the NASA web site Mission statement on the IR telescope WISE here is what they claim.
“Can we see IR from the ground, or do we have to be in space?
Some parts of the near infrared spectrum make it through the atmosphere. And a few windows of longer wavelengths make it to the ground as well. But most infrared is absorbed by the atmospheric greenhouse gases, especially water vapor.
How high do you have to get up in the atmosphere to see clearly in the infrared?
You need to get above most of the water vapor in the atmosphere. There have been planes and balloons fitted with telescopes that go up into the stratosphere to observe infrared. Space is the best place to detect or “see” infrared, however.”
The reason they have to launch this telescope in space is because most of the Infrared is already absorbed. That is why the “Tipping Point” scenerio is hard for me to believe as a potential reality. If so much IR is already absorbed that they have to launch the telescope into space, I don’t know that it would make much difference if more water evaporated or methane was released from the permafrost. If most the energy is already absorbed as NASA claims, then no matter what GHG you put into the atmosphere could only add the little bit extra heat. I am probably wrong in my conclusion and I am sure you are bright enough to answer my question.
Thanks!
Walter Manny, re: “..it has not warmed since the end of the 20th century..”
FYI, UAH lower troposphere statellite temperature anomalies:
Five year average 1996-2000: +0.132
Latest five years to November: +0.237
SecularAnimist — 3 December 2009 @ 2:39 PM:
In your list regarding the effects of Green House Gas emission warming on — Climate , atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and biosphere– you completely forgot warming of the blogosphere. What you have to understand is that GHG forcings also have profound differential affects on those who confuse science and politics, physics and phynance, or phacts and pheelings.
Steve
I don’t pretend to know the science, preferring to focus on the politics of science, which is far sexier.
What we’ve “learned” from this episode is that scientists frequently debate the accuracy and significance of data. Jeepers! And all this time I thought scientists were lonely geniuses working alone in labs, holding test tubes up to the light and crying “Eureka!”
Anyway, there ‘s a parallel between this case and the way creationists have exploited debates within the scientific community over biological evolution. What the biologists have been debating, of course, isn’t the fact of evolution but the mechanics of it. And the Adam-And-Eve-On-A-Triceratops crowd has been using the absence of 100-percent unanimity among scientists as “evidence” against evolution.
Seems to be that the denialists are trying to use the hacked emails in the same way. Going further, it seems that their opponents are making a mistake and inflating their importance by taking them seriously.
268, Garry S-J, you are quoting “Max”, not me.
Can someone with knowledge of such things answer this of-topic please.
My understanding:
GHGs do not “reflect” IR down from atmosphere
GHG Molecules are excited by certain wavelengths of IR:
http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/forcing/images/image7.gif
The molecules then re-radiate this energy in all directions.
However, if CO2 absorbs IR at 4 microns for example, then at what wavelength does it get re-radiated?
Will each transfer (radiation in to radiation out) heat the CO2 molecule? radiation in will be from a single direction radiation out will be in all directions. Does this mean that the IR will progressively get shifted to longer less energetic wavelengths? A pointer to any papers/or knowledgeable reply would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Mike
A new dimension is about to hit the mainstream media fan. BBC Newsnight has an interview with a programmer who has looked at the CRU codes, the “HARRY_READ_ME.txt” and found them wanting. He details the struggles of the CRU programmer, and decides that the poor guy was trying to organise data with a programme that was not fit for purpose.
The denialists are going to have a field day. It is going to muddy the waters at Copenhagen big time – unless we can show visually to the people that the warming trends are still present even if the CRU had not existed.
It seems to me, an amateur, that the most expeditious way to unmuddy the waters would be to pull all the CRU work out of the equation and present a new composite 1000y temperature graph.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png
Not because the CRU work is necessarily wrong, but because they are now seen to be wrong, under public suspicion, bringing climate science generally under a cloud of doubt.
I am confident that the Spaghetti Graph, relieved of one or two strands, or however many emanate from CRU, will still show significant warming.
Is that technically possible, or is the CRU data present in all temperature data?
The CRU work may or may not stand up to review. That will have to wait. The vital action now is to get a revised, CRU-free Spaghetti Graph onto the retinae of the citizens of the world.
Gavin, and all the others, we all owe you a huge debt of thanks for your work.
Here is an idea.
If you think it matters, get some students to get a wiki site together and start them gathering data from the sources and start posting the copies of raw data available. Index it all clearly.
Then post the modified data and the algorithms, if not the code that is used to adjust it (and explain why).
Considering the trillions that the legislation that is being posted is going to potentially cost us, I don’t think it is asking too much.
Let the skeptics chew on it and put people to task defending it.
A tough row to hoe, but if its sound, it will hold up. If the critics make silly errors reading it, just point out why they are wrong.
I don’t see where much else will convince people. If you really believe it is so serious we need to radically alter the very nature of our energy driven economy (which I believe needs to happen anyway) then this is the perfect opportunity to throw the data in the critics faces. If they are wrong, the proof will all be there.
Norman (289) — I suggest you read Ray Pierrehumbert’s
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.html
as a starter.
Sorry Walter!
“Pretending that this is some new discovery that has only just been discovered might work elsewhere, but here it just makes you look silly. -gavin”
Who said that this is a new discovery? I certainly did not. The fact remains that without feedbacks there is no way that a doubling of CO2 will produce a 3 or 4 degree C warming. Just can’t happen. Estimates are that for a doubling of co2 alone and without feedbacks the temperature rise would be of the order of 1.4 to 1.75 degrees.
I agree that the world is what it is. It is certainly not what you choose to make it.
Bill — 3 December 2009 @ 2:44 PM:
Another answer to your question regarding the 2% of proprietary data used by the CRU, in a way different from Gavin’s inline comment, note the following: The data in question doesn’t belong to the CRU and the owners of the data, presumably, will not delete it, but if they do it is their prerogative. The owners make these data available free of charge to those that meet their criteria, and to others for a charge at their discretion. The CRU has no control over these data without the approval of the owners. Some of this may not be responsive to your question, but I though it all worth mentioning given the context of this topic thread.
Steve