Why 'climategate' won't stop greens

[lomiller]

I think you have a good point, here. I guess what I am trying to say is that the world has been warming since the last ice age. There have been periods since then when the warming has accelerated, and there have been periods of cooling as well.

Not true. There has been a gradual cooling trend for ~8000 years. It’s predicted from Milankovitch cycles and shows up in the proxy data.

My hypothesis is that the rate of warming experienced since the beginning of the industrial revolution is not significantly different than maximum rates of warming experienced in the past.

again this isn't born out by the published temperature reconstructions. the last time it was warming this quickly was at the end of the last ice age.

 

[lomiller]

But I don't understand why the record shows the following:

[qimg]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg[/qimg]

(source=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg)

It seems as if the CO varies from approximately 100 ppm to 300 ppm. Going from 100 ppm to 300 ppm like shown in the peak at ~11,000 years ago should drive the temperature up by approximately 3.2 degrees if we assume a logarithmic relationship based upon doubling driving a 2 degree change.

But the temperature actually increases by much, much more, about 10 degrees as far as I can tell.

I suspect you are confusing deg C with deg F. from ~14000 years ago to ~11000 years ago the earth warmed by ~6 deg C which is right in line the both the theoretical and modeled sensitivity of ~3 deg C per doubing of CO2

 

[a_unique_person]

It will matter to them if their government funding stops. I understand that 99% fo AGW funding is borne by the tax paying public.
You might not have noticed, but politicians are pretty easily swayed by what their constituents think. If their constituents think that AGW science and those involved are on the nose, they will be hard pressed to keep it funded, regardless of what that individual politician (or the scientists) think.

LOL. There has always been funding for climate research, paid by your taxes,and always will be, regardless of whether there is AGW or not.

 

[Wangler]

I suspect you are confusing deg C with deg F. from ~14000 years ago to ~11000 years ago the earth warmed by ~6 deg C which is right in line the both the theoretical and modeled sensitivity of ~3 deg C per doubing of CO2

I suspect you didn't bother to look at the graph.

 

[Wangler]

Then you really don't have a grasp of the science.

Well, it's easy to get confused:

If we know how much CO2 has changed we can compute how much warming there will be. Period.

...

Arrhenius predicted that doubling CO2 would increase temperatures by 4 degrees C which later physicists, aware of factors he was not, modified to 2 degrees C. In fact we see exactly this effect in the climate record and also on Venus and on Mars.

...

CO2 is not always the driver in the past, sometimes it responds to warming from other reasons (orbital mechanics) and accelerates the warming. And then it can bring on other effects (methane for example) that amplify the warming it causes.

The first and third statements in particular seem at odds.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

LOL. There has always been funding for climate research, paid by your taxes,and always will be, regardless of whether there is AGW or not.

That may well be true.
But is it true that there was the same amount spent last year than (say) 20 years ago? Not a chance.

You deliberately miss the point, which is that funding could be severely and adversely impacted upon if the public decide that this science smells bad.

 

[elbe]

You deliberately miss the point, which is that funding could be severely and adversely impacted upon if the public decide that this science smells bad.

So we are encouraging that funding be cut because the public thinks the science is bad? What a sad world we are living in.

All it seems to come down to is that some deniers are so blindly political that they might be willing to damage legitimate science just because they don't agree with it. How fair is that?

 

[Hallo Alfie]

So we are encouraging that funding be cut because the public thinks the science is bad? What a sad world we are living in.

All it seems to come down to is that some deniers are so blindly political that they might be willing to damage legitimate science just because they don't agree with it. How fair is that?

No one is encouraging anything, this little debate has been about the impact of the emails.
What you are trying to distort is the obvious conclusion that some of us have that if public sentiment turns against the AGW science because it smells bad, the politics will follow and funding cut.
Science and politics have never been about fairness.

In the meantime

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece

 

[elbe]

No one is encouraging anything, this little debate has been about the impact of the emails.
What you are trying to distort is the obvious conclusion that some of us have that if public sentiment turns against the AGW science because it smells bad, the politics will follow and funding cut.
Science and politics have never been about fairness.

It only "smells bad" to the people who are ideologically opposed to it, if they then attempt to influence popular and political opinion to damage AGW's funding that's a deliberate act of sabotage.

ETA: Seriously, if it's bad science it will be shown and other theories will overthrow it. Trying to take it down through it's funding is pretty much like saying "we've got nothing to dispute their claims, but since we disagree with them politically we'll try to shut them up".

 

[Hallo Alfie]

It only "smells bad" to the people who are ideologically opposed to it, if they then attempt to influence popular and political opinion to damage AGW's funding that's a deliberate act of sabotage.

ETA: Seriously, if it's bad science it will be shown and other theories will overthrow it. Trying to take it down through it's funding is pretty much like saying "we've got nothing to dispute their claims, but since we disagree with them politically we'll try to shut them up".

But The Met are checking it out because they think it smells. Are they ideologically opposed? They are the first public-type body to make a move and I will bet London to a brick they wont be the last.

This smells bad to objective warmers as well as Joe Sixpack. The objective warmers are calling for investigations and heads. They say things from "the science is undermined", "peer review is undermined" and the warmers are "in denial" if they think this is not important. etc

These are not people ideologically opposed.

 

[a_unique_person]

I am not a GW denier, I am an AGW skeptic.
The earth is warming. Man has only a very minor contribution to that warming.

As a sceptic, you should be able to support evidence for your claim.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

As a sceptic, you should be able to support evidence for your claim.

Check the science threads for those discussions

 

[elbe]

But The Met are checking it out because they think it smells. Are they ideologically opposed? They are the first public-type body to make a move and I will bet London to a brick they wont be the last.

Are they? Or are they looking into it because there is public pressure instigated by the denier crowd? Nothing I've seen from the emails suggests bad science. Maybe some ethical problems, but that doesn't impact the cold hard facts.

This smells bad to objective warmers as well as Joe Sixpack. The objective warmers are calling for investigations and heads. They say things from "the science is undermined", "peer review is undermined" and the warmers are "in denial" if they think this is not important. etc

These are not people ideologically opposed.

Denial? I think they're more concerned with the science. Nothing the denier crowd does smells of science, it smells of political and ideological scheming.

By the way, how can a "warmer" be both objective and in denial?

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Are they? Or are they looking into it because there is public pressure instigated by the denier crowd? Nothing I've seen from the emails suggests bad science. Maybe some ethical problems, but that doesn't impact the cold hard facts.

I have only read the article and assume you have too. We can draw our own conclusions. Whatever the reason they see it as having suffient weight for them to review the data. This will take three years and one can only imagine the costs.

Denial? I think they're more concerned with the science. Nothing the denier crowd does smells of science, it smells of political and ideological scheming.

By the way, how can a "warmer" be both objective and in denial?

Of course they are concerned with the science; the denial relates to the emails and the dismissal of them as a non event.

This is Mr Monbiot on the emails (my emphasis)

"I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away."

 

[a_unique_person]

Check the science threads for those discussions

You just made a claim in this thread. I'm asking you to provide evidence for it. If you can't......

 

[a_unique_person]

"I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away."

Monbiot is wrong. They are damaging in the sense that the deniast liars will continue the pattern they already have of misusing data and misrepresenting claims. Indeed, most of the 'damaging' claims I have seen made of the CRU code and emails are lies and misrepresentations. I also think Monbiot does not understand what Jones and the CRU have been up against. Reading denialist sites from time to time, I see continual personal attacks and accusations made against scientists. These same people then demand to be treated with respect and for the those same scientists to help them in the quest to launch more vitriol against them. I would have done exactly what Jones did.

ETA. I'm not saying that is the best response to make, but I don't like to take **** from **** either.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Monbiot is wrong. They are damaging in the sense that the deniast liars will continue the pattern they already have of misusing data and misrepresenting claims. Indeed, most of the 'damaging' claims I have seen made of the CRU code and emails are lies and misrepresentations. I also think Monbiot does not understand what Jones and the CRU have been up against. Reading denialist sites from time to time, I see continual personal attacks and accusations made against scientists. These same people then demand to be treated with respect and for the those same scientists to help them in the quest to launch more vitriol against them. I would have done exactly what Jones did.

ETA. I'm not saying that is the best response to make, but I don't like to take **** from **** either.

Easy, you're going to have us feel sorry for Jones et al soon.

BTW.
You are eating your own by ignoring other senior scientists.

 

[a_unique_person]

Easy, you're going to have us feel sorry for Jones et al soon.

You are eating your own.

Any evidence for your claim you made in this thread yet?

You just feign ignorance for whatever is most convenient for you. Jones has been the subject of sustained personal attacks. You do not want to know about this. Scientists worked out years ago that personal attacks were anti-science and published literature ever resorts to them.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Any evidence for your claim you made in this thread yet?

You just feign ignorance for whatever is most convenient for you. Jones has been the subject of sustained personal attacks. You do not want to know about this. Scientists worked out years ago that personal attacks were anti-science and published literature ever resorts to them.

Check the science threads, there is heaps of evidence for why some people are skeptical about AGW.

 

[elbe]

It's interesting that you've passed over a very important bit in your quote.

It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science).

It won't change the actual science, but all the denier movement can do is hurt scientific research. If they aren't providing counter research that stands up to legitimate scrutiny it's just another anti-science crusade, like the creationists. That's what's being pushed, a new brand of creationism. Attach the legitimate science with politics and hope it goes away. Just ignore the consequences of that.