Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Reality Check]

On May 16, 2011, American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center ....

If you read your own link, it has nothing to do with climate science, the subject of this thread, or any trial of Mann.

It is a request for the finanacial records of the UVA about grants that Mann got payments from and private emails. The American Tradition Institute seems to be basically harassing Mann though legal means which seems to be a current denialist technique now that they have out of scientific evidence for their stance. If ATI win then this case will provide a precedent where any lawyer can read the private correspondence of any scientist. This will be devastating for science in general where a free exchange of ideas and robust criticism of them is necessary.

Mann will not be found guilty of anything in this legal action against UVA. So that part of your post was wrong.

Your link is out of date. Timeline: Legal Harassment of Climate Scientist Michael Mann has a more current list of th actions against Mann where the Virginia Supreme Court threw out Kenneth Cuccinelli's FATA case (mentioned in the link):

March 2
The Virginia Supreme Court rules in the University of Virginia's favor in the Mann case, with the majority finding that the university is not a "person" as defined in the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), and therefore the Attorney General has no authority under the Act to make civil investigative demands (CIDs) of the university. (See UCS press release.)

So it looks likely (in my limited knowledge) that this FOIA action will also be thrown out.

If you want to learn more about the ATI then there is this article: Who's behind the 'information attacks' on climate scientists?

 

[Trakar]

The quote was taken from the link you posted almost verbatim. If you disagree with the articles you post it would be in everyone's interest for you to do so at the time of posting. It keeps the goal posts from moving.

And the articles I posted do not contradict anything I have said, but please provide any evidence you can find that supports your contentions as there may be statements that people other than yourself have found confusing, and I would rather clarify than confound this issue.

 

[Trakar]

...The case against him was dismissed due to some poor wording by the GA and SCOTUS saying commonwealth institutions aren't "people" and therefore not subject to the same FOI requests.

Cite or reference? As far as I know SCOTUS has never had any of these issues before it.

 

[Trakar]

lol, no he hasn't. He's just successfully blocked any attempt to have his emails "the evidence" made public.

While the warmists claim he's been "vindicated" they've also started a legal defense fund for him. The "vindicated" don't need lawyers where I'm from.

You seem to be paying much more attention to the assault upon Mann than I do, perhaps you can answer a few questions for me.

Evidence of what?

What exactly is he alledged to have said in his emails that would indicate any personal criminal act or any more broad undermining of climate science?

Is there any actual indication that these emails contain record of any actual improprieties, or is this merely a fishing expedition to see if anything embarassing or incriminating, or anything that can be made to seem embarassing or incriminating (as was the case with the hacked HAD/CRU emails) can be found within his emails?

 

[Trakar]

Exactly, and socalledskepticalscience.com and realcrapclimate.com have been shown time and time again to be pseudoscientific.

I really don't care to argue this any further. If they're legit then just cite the papers and journals they sourced.

You have made this assertion repeatedly, there is no error there. As far as such being "shown," or more importantly "compellingly demonstrated," not that I have witnessed.

In order to be "pseudo-scientific" the sites would have to be promoting or advocating fallacious science presented as mainstream science. I believe I recall you using some instances of personal/subjective opinions of public policy in a discussion on one of the sites as evidence that it was a pseudoscience site. While I would certainly agree that such discussions are not "science," even when they are rhetorically hyperbolic political statements, they are not pseudoscience, until the nonscientific is presented as mainstream science.

 

[Trakar]

Fraud. The ATI case and the one in BC may make the emails public. If the emails show he set out to manipulate data in order to secure funding he may face fraud charges...

And you believe that he did this because of what evidences? What leads you to believe that incriminating evidences of this presumed behavior exist within the private communications you desire to have made public?

 

[Reality Check]

It looks like you really want this answered, GwynpaineL

Was there a cool period, say 1997- 2009? Answers to this question might be accessible to the lay mind.

On page 118, Trakar usefully cited the study by Foster and Rahmstorf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf

The answer is no as in the abstract:

We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global
warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr��1. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Ni˜no/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Ni˜no/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.

Anyone looking at this century in the raw data (which is actually 2000-2010) would say that there has been a marked warming.

However a more knowledgeable person would ask what the statistical significance of this trend is. They would conclude that the period is too small for a trend to have statistical significance since the trend could have been created by the noise in the data.
What we have is fluctuations from many sources superimposed on a possible trend. This is the noise refered to in the paper. The Foster and Rahmstorf paper tries to remove noise to find the trend more accurately.

The standard in climate science has been that climate is weather that happens over length of 30 years. Thus climate scientists talk about multi-decade trends. Recent research suggests that the period over which to look at trends in global temperature is >17 years (Separating signal and noise in climate warming)​

 

[Furcifer]

If you read your own link, it has nothing to do with climate science, the subject of this thread, or any trial of Mann.

It is a request for the finanacial records of the UVA about grants that Mann got payments from and private emails. The American Tradition Institute seems to be basically harassing Mann though legal means which seems to be a current denialist technique now that they have out of scientific evidence for their stance. If ATI win then this case will provide a precedent where any lawyer can read the private correspondence of any scientist. This will be devastating for science in general where a free exchange of ideas and robust criticism of them is necessary.

No, just the ones seeking funds from the taxpayer.

It has everything to do with climate science. The allegations are that he may have fudged the numbers in order to secure more funding.

Mann will not be found guilty of anything in this legal action against UVA. So that part of your post was wrong.

Correct. My statement was presumtiuous.

Your link is out of date. Timeline: Legal Harassment of Climate Scientist Michael Mann has a more current list of th actions against Mann where the Virginia Supreme Court threw out Kenneth Cuccinelli's FATA case (mentioned in the link):

So it looks likely (in my limited knowledge) that this FOIA action will also be thrown out.

If you want to learn more about the ATI then there is this article: Who's behind the 'information attacks' on climate scientists?

Corect. It was the Virginia Supreme court, not SCOTUS. The ATI case is likely headed to SCOTUS and I confused that with this. My bad.

As the judge indicated in Prince William, what does it matter what their motivations are for wanting the information? If it's to be made public at the public's request that's all there is too it. Pointing the finger back at them is nothing more than a weak excuse.

 

[Furcifer]

And the articles I posted do not contradict anything I have said, but please provide any evidence you can find that supports your contentions as there may be statements that people other than yourself have found confusing, and I would rather clarify than confound this issue.

Nonsense. There's a few pages of outright denial by yourself and a few others that the economy and econmic growth was not tied to CO2 emissions. Digging up the link isn't worth the time, we've obviously moved on and you now see how the economy works in this regard. That's all that is important.

 

[Furcifer]

Cite or reference? As far as I know SCOTUS has never had any of these issues before it.

see the post above. The Virginia Supreme Court heard this issue and SCOTUS will most likely hear the ATI case next year. My mistake.

 

[Furcifer]

You seem to be paying much more attention to the assault upon Mann than I do, perhaps you can answer a few questions for me.

Evidence of what?

What exactly is he alledged to have said in his emails that would indicate any personal criminal act or any more broad undermining of climate science?

Of fraud, I already said this.

Is there any actual indication that these emails contain record of any actual improprieties, or is this merely a fishing expedition to see if anything embarassing or incriminating, or anything that can be made to seem embarassing or incriminating (as was the case with the hacked HAD/CRU emails) can be found within his emails?

The emails haven't been made public. This is equivalent to asking if there's any indication a planet that hasn't been discovered yet has life on it. The emails were to be part of what is known legally as "discovery".

 

[Furcifer]

And you believe that he did this because of what evidences? What leads you to believe that incriminating evidences of this presumed behavior exist within the private communications you desire to have made public?

I don't believe anything. I said I would reserve judgement until all of the facts are known.

 

[steenkh]

I don't believe anything. I said I would reserve judgement until all of the facts are known.

What the result mean to you if he gets convicted as you hope? After all, the hockey stick has been confirmed by numerous other research projects so the science is not shaken. Will you then try to prove that all climate researchers fudge their results?

 

[Reality Check]

It has everything to do with climate science. The allegations are that he may have fudged the numbers in order to secure more funding.

Then this shows that total ignorance or denier bias of these lawyers.
If they knew anything about climate science then they would know that Mann's results have been confirmed by other researchers.
What evidence is there for the hockey stick?

An independent assessment of Mann's hockey stick was conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Wahl 2007). They reconstructed temperatures employing a variety of statistical techniques (with and without principal components analysis). Their results found slightly different temperatures in the early 15th Century. However, they confirmed the principal results of the original hockey stick - that the warming trend and temperatures over the last few decades are unprecedented over at least the last 600 years.

(emphasis added)

These lawyers should believe that not only did Mann fudge his data but that Wahl & Ammann must have done this also. Where are the requests for Wahl & Ammann correspondence about their tax payer-funded research, Furcifer?
Can you smell harrasment of Mann ?

As the judge indicated in Prince William, what does it matter what their motivations are for wanting the information?

The Who's behind the 'information attacks' on climate scientists? link is about the evidence that the ATI is funded by a bunch of climate change deniers. They have a right to try to get the information. The UVA has the right to follow the correct procedure in disclosing the information which includes determining what is exempted.

One controversy has been that UVA did not follow this procedure, i.e. "prepare an indexed summary of potentially exempt documents and the specific exemption that applies" and if there is any dispute then a judge decides in camera. Instead they agreed that "ATI lawyers, including the very individuals who filed the open records request, to review all documents in the university’s possession, including material which will ultimately be exempt from disclosure.". The ATI lawyers would be under a gag order though.

Their motivation is evidence that they are harassing Mann (also see Timeline: Legal Harassment of Climate Scientist Michael Mann) because of the political beliefs of their backers, not because they have any evidence that the correspondence will show that Mann fudged his results.

 

[Gwynpaine]

MADZENS DATA; for a recent cool period

When I discussed the Foster and Rahmstorf article I hoped to make it clear that I had read it. Their five raw unadjusted series show a strong upward trend; the mean temperature on each calendar decade is greater than the previous one. So the latest decade is the hottest decade on record. In the GISS series shows 2010 is the hottest year on record. The hottest year1998 on others is is an outlier, probably due to El Nino activity. I saw nothing there to support the view that the global warming trend had recently came to a halt.

I am looking for the best evidence that global warming did recently come to a halt. The ablest skeptic I have managed to find is Richard Madzen, who is certainly a real scientist and who did make that claim in 2009 in the Wall Street Journal. He cannot possibly have been using the F and R data, so I want to see the data he did use, preferably in graphic form. I am not looking for people who agree with me on this, I am looking for people who disagree.

Westwall, do your duty! Furcifur, its all on your shoulders!

More recently Mazen has made the similar claim:

T

he IPCC claim that most of the recent warming (since the 1950s) is due to man assumed that current models adequately accounted for natural internal variability. The failure of these models to anticipate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years or so contradicts this assumption. This has been acknowledged by major modeling groups in England and Germany”

I suspect the stuff about modelling falure is just handwaving. Perhaps what Lindzen should have written is:" there has been global warming over the last few years but it has not been statistically significant". Statistical significance of course need not imply practical significance. A random sample of ten thousand Ruritanians might show that they are a millimetre taller than the European average. That result would be statistically significant. A random sample of nine Dutchmen might show they were three inches taller than the average American. That would be evidence for a significant difference, but it might not be statistically significant, especially if there was wide variation within the tiny group. Perhaps I have it wrong, but I am assuming that Madzen’s null hypothesis here is that there has been no increase or decrease of underlying warming over this fourteen year period. At some level of significance the visible evidence that there was such warming is not strong enough for him to reject that null hypothesis. But that null hypothesis it seems to me would only be of interest if the world began 14 years ago. However I am ready to be corrected by Westwall or Furcifer or any other defender of Madzen

 

[Reality Check]

The ablest skeptic I have managed to find is Richard Madzen, who is certainly a real scientist and who did make that claim in 2009 in the Wall Street Journal.

That is actually Richard Lindzen, who is certainly a real scientist but has been talking about the "natural internal variability" myth for some time.

 

[Pixel42]

I am looking for the best evidence that global warming did recently come to a halt. The ablest skeptic I have managed to find is Richard Madzen, who is certainly a real scientist and who did make that claim in 2009 in the Wall Street Journal. He cannot possibly have been using the F and R data, so I want to see the data he did use, preferably in graphic form.

Phil Jones (yes, that Phil Jones) also agreed in 2009 that there had been no statistically significant warming since 1995, which was seized on by the deniers with great glee. You'll find the full story, including the graph you're looking for, here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm

 

[Trakar]

I have a real problem with how they calculate these temperatures though. Stated in the article i read (which gave the exact same years as the warmest) They use an avg. of temperatures from 1951-1980 as a baseline to measure all these temperatures.

There is no mention of any of the 1951-1980 temperatures as being listable individually.

That would skew any results towards the now by the nature of the measurement technique eh?

you are mistaken

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

 

[Trakar]

...Corect. It was the Virginia Supreme court, not SCOTUS. The ATI case is likely headed to SCOTUS and I confused that with this. My bad.

What leads you to believe that the ATI case would reach SCOTUS, I'm not even sure it will make it to, yet alone out of the Virginia Supreme Court, especially in any manner that the SCOTUS would be interested in takng it up.

 

[Trakar]

Nonsense. There's a few pages of outright denial by yourself and a few others that the economy and econmic growth was not tied to CO2 emissions. Digging up the link isn't worth the time, we've obviously moved on and you now see how the economy works in this regard. That's all that is important.

There is no intrinsic connection, beyond the fact that we happen to currently use fossil fuels for the bulk of our energy needs. Replace the fossil fuels and there is no direct connection to CO2 emissions and the economy. The point we were trying to make in the previous discussion that you now attempt to distort, is that you can have a robust economy without fossil fuelled power sources and their CO2 emissions.