“Climategate” Emails Are Latest Conservative Misfire

November 20th, 2009 Global Warming 28 Comments


('DiggThis’)

Share

I am totally shocked that gambling is going on here.

Posted in Global Warming |
«
»
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

28 Responses to ““Climategate” Emails Are Latest Conservative Misfire”

  1. mambochicken23 says:
    November 20, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    Huh. Go figure. I am surprised and outraged.

  2. william says:
    November 20, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Yeah, changing and hiding data, falsifying data, and avoiding FOIA requests for data are all a non-story.

    • mambochicken23 says:
      November 20, 2009 at 10:04 pm

      Uh huh. Even if what you said is true (which I strongly suspect it is not, if I understand you correctly), it doesn’t mean that there’s a conspiracy out there about climate change. So yeah, a non-story with respect to the topic of global warming. And Limbaugh and Co. are all a bunch of lying shitheads.

      • william says:
        November 20, 2009 at 10:31 pm

        Lying shit heads alright –

        “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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

        “It was good to see you again yesterday – if briefly. One particular thing you said – and we agreed – was about the IPCC reports and the broader climate negotiations were working to the globalisation agenda driven by organisations like the WTO. So my first question is do you have anything written or published, or know of anything particularly on this subject, which talks about this in more detail?”

        “In my (perhaps too
        > > harsh)
        > > view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
        > > results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use
        > > results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
        > > here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
        > > forcing assumptions/uncertainties.”

        “General Comments
        The idea that climate without human intervention can only undergo “natural variability”, and that “climate change” can only result from human activity is false and fallacious. It is in conflict with all that we know of evolution and geology. It is simply wrong to assume that “ climate change” automatically implies human influence on the climate.
        …This fallacy is embraced by the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the IPCC (Footnote to “Summary for Policymakers. Page 1) claim that they are prepared to accept “natural variability” as “climate change”. They are, however, unwilling to accept the truth, which is that climate can change without human intervention.
        …47 out of 91 models listed in Chapter 9 assume that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at the rate of 1% a year when the measured rate of increase, for the past 33 years, has been 0.4% a year. The assumption of false figures in models in order to boost future projections is fraudulent. What other figures are falsely exaggerated in the same way?”

        ” 2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we’ve found a way around this.”

        “Mike,

        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.

        I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
        Cheers
        Phil”

        http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1648-Global-Warming-SCAM-HackLeak-FLASH.html

        • mambochicken23 says:
          November 20, 2009 at 10:40 pm

          Read the link, and very little of it unambiguously supports your position. A lot of it is you and Limbaugh seeing what you want to see. Read this:

          http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/i-read-through-160000000-bytes-of.html

          • william says:
            November 21, 2009 at 10:43 am

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

            Sorry you hate science so much, but it’s not getting warmer. It’s getting colder.

            • mambochicken23 says:
              November 21, 2009 at 2:03 pm

              Yeah, I hate science. Good point.

              I don’t have the energy to go through your super-awesome Wikipedia link and figure out what you’re talking about. You want to give me the story?

              And I believe that what… three of the 5 hottest years on record on Earth have been in the last 6 years? Something like that. It’s in the FiveThirtyEight link I provided. So how does that reconcile with your assertion that the Earth is getting colder?

              I am no climate scientist, but I don’t happen to enjoy tinfoil hats. I do not believe that there’s some massive conspiracy here. Until some real strong evidence comes out from climate scientists that the Earth is cooling, and we don’t have to worry about manmade warming, I am going to go with the vast majority of scientists. If I see that evidence, then I will change my mind and say that you were right. But I don’t think that evidence exists.

              • william says:
                November 21, 2009 at 4:26 pm

                “three of the 5 hottest years on record on Earth have been in the last 6 years”

                Wrong. Ever hear of the Eocene Optimum? Google it.

                • mambochicken23 says:
                  November 21, 2009 at 5:17 pm

                  Agh, of course I didn’t mean in the entirety of Earth’s history. Though I can see how what I said was ambiguous.

                  http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

                  There’s a strong correlation between global industrialization, carbon emissions, and a rise in global temperatures. Yes, correlation does not imply causation – but we also know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that DOES trap heat. So it serves to reason that an increase in atmospheric CO2 would correspond to an increase in global temperatures, all other things being equal.

                  And we haven’t even begun to talk about other aspects of the warming trend that are major problems, including the acidification and temperature rise of the oceans and the bleaching of coral reefs, all of which are contributing toward the destruction of marine life.

                  You really don’t have a leg to stand on, man. I will take the scientific analysis of people at NASA and at the IPCC over your crackpot arguments.

            • AwkwardSilence says:
              November 21, 2009 at 3:07 pm

              And sorry you hate context so much. That image you plucked can be tracked back to its author, a PhD student “focused on the earth sciences, climatology and related areas”, whose wiki work “has [primarily] been related to climate change/global warming”.

              The first line he chose to quote in his website?

              Climate change is real. There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth’s climate. – From the Joint Statement on Climate Change – National Science Academies

              Understanding science- and specifically climate science- requires more than a hamfisted, “hrrrrrr… this graph go down, must mean cold!1!1!!!” interpretation of a single chart. The sheer number of shifting variables involved in defining relative warmth over a span of millions of years is insanely staggering.

              And while I have no doubt that he’s fully qualified to analyze all these numbers and scienc-y sounding stuff, remind me– what near-junior college did Rush fail out of again?

        • fafaroo says:
          November 21, 2009 at 1:56 am

          Awesome. There will never, ever be another debate about climate change that doesn’t begin and end with a conservative moron saying “It’s all faked! The emails proved it!”

          We’re all doomed.

          • mambochicken23 says:
            November 21, 2009 at 8:55 pm

            Seriously. Their ability to latch onto something like this, as though one or two questionable e-mails negates fucking thousands of researchers’ work on the topic… it’s mind boggling. Just absurd. But then again, they are a bunch of ideological, science-denying fuckwits that don’t give a shit about the actual truth.

            • AwkwardSilence says:
              November 21, 2009 at 9:30 pm

              What with this being Limbaugh-based and all, it should be noted that this brand of “logic” (term used loosely, with fingers crossed on one hand and the other making the international ‘wanking off’ gesture) is perfectly consistent with the right’s recent assertion that all of the well-documented instances of his on-air racism/race baiting should be discounted simply because two false (allegedly- perhaps ‘unproven’ is a better term) examples were floated on the internet.

  3. fafaroo says:
    November 20, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    William, WTF are you talking about?

  4. SaveFarris says:
    November 20, 2009 at 10:20 pm

    Media Matters: when accuracy counts…

  5. The Dark Avenger says:
    November 20, 2009 at 11:41 pm

    Patterico.com, when you want nothing but the best wingnuttery…………………?

  6. Frank DiSalle says:
    November 21, 2009 at 9:49 am

    When there were objections to the theory of “Global Warming” and its histrionic warnings of our imminent demise, we were told,”It’s the science! Look at the facts”
    Now it appears the “science” may not have been science, and the “facts” may have been fudged, and the Globalwarmians are saying, “No! no! They’re the liars!” You sound like Christians who have just heard the world is not 6,000 years old.
    Hmmm.

    • mambochicken23 says:
      November 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm

      Comparing people who acknowledge global climate change to those morons who think the Earth is less than 6,000 years old. Stupid as usual, Frank. Thanks for the laugh.

  7. The Dark Avenger says:
    November 21, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Yes, Frank DiSalle, one questionable e-mail means that global warming is a big scientific fraud:

    Sea ice young and thin as melt season begins

    How vulnerable is the ice cover as we go into the summer melt season? To answer this question, scientists also need information about ice thickness. Indications of winter ice thickness, commonly derived from ice age estimates, reveal that the ice is thinner than average, suggesting that it is more susceptible to melting away during the coming summer.

    As the melt season begins, the Arctic Ocean is covered mostly by first-year ice, which formed this winter, and second-year ice, which formed during the winter of 2007 to 2008. First-year ice in particular is thinner and more prone to melting away than thicker, older, multi-year ice. This year, ice older than two years accounted for less than 10% of the ice cover at the end of February. From 1981 through 2000, such older ice made up an average of 30% of the total sea ice cover at this time of the year.

    While ice older than two years reached record lows, the fraction of second-year sea ice increased compared to last winter. Some of this second-year ice will survive the summer melt season to replenish the Arctic’s store of older ice; however, in recent years less young ice has made it through the summer. To restore the amount of older ice to pre-2000 levels, large amounts of this young ice would need to endure through summer for several years in a row.

    But conditions may not always favor the survival of second-year and older ice. Each winter, winds and ocean currents move some sea ice out of the Arctic ocean. This winter, some second-year ice survived the 2008 melt season only to be pushed out of the Arctic by strong winter winds. Based on sea ice age data from Jim Maslanik and Chuck Fowler at the University of Colorado, since the end of September 2008, 390,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles) of second-year ice and 190,000 square kilometers (73,000 square miles) of older (more than two years old) ice moved out of the Arctic.

    Link

  8. Frank DiSalle says:
    November 21, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Mambo, insubstantive insult as usual. Find a fact. Use it, Participate. Arrogant, condescending, patronizing and irrelevant, as usual.

    Aliens cause Global Warming

    • mambochicken23 says:
      November 21, 2009 at 8:52 pm

      What? You just compared people who believe in global warming to believers in a young Earth.

      Let’s see… one side is backed up with mountains of scientific evidence, and the other side bases their belief on a thousands-year old fairy tale that was written by ignorant fools out in the desert.

      Yeah. Good call. I should have treated your comparison with more respect. *rolls eyes*

  9. Amused Observer says:
    November 21, 2009 at 8:11 pm

    I’ve glanced through the hacked emails. One can’t help but see a pattern that the data is being massaged to fit a hypothesis. Real science allows the chips to fall where they may and requires dissenting ideas to act as a crucible to prove a theory. What is revealed in these e mails are not questions of semantics but whole hearted efforts to obscure the facts, to advance a preconceived agenda, and to thwart transparency. Advocacy furthered by fraud are not the hallmarks of responsible science. Mambo and other denizens of the ivory towers have forgotten the most basic premise of the scientific discipline.

    • mambochicken23 says:
      November 21, 2009 at 8:49 pm

      Mambo and other denizens of the ivory towers have forgotten the most basic premise of the scientific discipline.

      And you’re an idiot, as usual, Amused. I’ve never come on here and said that what they did was appropriate – indeed, it does seem like some amount of “massaging” of the data occurred to make the overall picture “prettier”. That is rarely, if ever, an ethical action to take when analyzing and presenting scientific data. And if that is what has happened here, then I condemn these individuals for these actions. I am honest enough, however, to know that my interpretation and understanding of these e-mails is perhaps not complete nor accurate, so I am not jumping to conclusions about whether they analyzed the data in an unethical fashion. You and the other resident wingnut morons without science training, on the other hand…

      However, even if they DID unethically present the data, that does not mean that global warming is now fraudulent. There is no conspiracy, the scientific evidence still supports the notion that man is causing global climate change, etc. For fuck’s sake.

      I’d like to point out, once more, AO, that you do not know me and that you do not know how good a scientist I am. Quit being such a lowlife piece of shit troll.

  10. Southern Quaker says:
    November 21, 2009 at 9:33 pm

    Context, as they say, is everything.

    I haven’t parsed every quote lifted from the stolen emails, but I think I can, perhaps, shed some light on at least one of the passages in question.

    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. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N.

    The “trick” is cutting a particular data set off at around the year 1960, and appending direct measurements of temperatures to temperatures derived from tree-ring density. We only have direct measurements of global temperatures over a relatively short period of history. Global temperatures prior to the 1900s or so must be determined by proxy. The two most common methods are ice core data and tree ring density. The thing is, the original authors of the tree ring study quoted recommend ignoring their own data after that point in time. It is a well-known fact that the tree-ring data begins to diverge from direct measurement of temperature sometime during the 1960s. No one knows why, but using proxy data that diverges from direct measurement doesn’t make a lot of sense, and muddles the conclusions.

    A scientific “trick” is not always a nefarious plot to deceive the public. Often it is simply a well-known short-cut that makes the numbers easier to analyze or interpret. For example, my students just presented some data at a statewide symposium last weekend. The data is recorded in units of flux density/frequency, and plotting flux density vs. wavelength (rather than frequency) is a “trick” to make the spectra look a bit nicer. When the net flux in the emission is actually calculated we convert the wavelengths to frequencies, so that our results are meaningful. But the graph is prettier if you don’t convert the units, and that is the standard way to present the data. It’s a “trick” of the trade, but not meant to deceive.

  11. Southern Quaker says:
    November 21, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    And just in case it’s not clear, the “decline” they are hiding is the decline in temperature measured by the tree ring density method. But we already know that that data is not valid for more recent epochs, and that the apparent decline is not real. So they aren’t really hiding anything, they are just ignoring invalid data. Data which everyone recognizes is invalid, no less.

Oliver Willis

Contact
Email: owillis@gmail.com
Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
AIM: oliverwill
Huffington Post Columns
Media Matters Blog Entries