The center IPCC cannot hold:
A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.
The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.
With the recent glacier revelations, the hockey stick fraud and the evidence of scientific malfeasance at CRU, I’m fast turning from skeptical to downright angry.
AGW may or may not be a significant concern, but it appears that the only way we’ll ever know is in retrospect: The people we were supposed to trust have proven to be little more than snake oil salesmen.
What a goat rope.
Green. It’s the new Red.
The only “GREEN” these bastards are interested in is the “GREEN” in our pockets….There will be a special place in HELL for those who profited off the “sky is falling” mantra…
AL “WHORE” GORE is tops on my list…another in a long line of idiots who were given a complete pass by the media and lauded by the limosine liberals….sounds like our President…given a free pass until his true colors were demonstrated by sacrificing our countries’ greatness on the altar of political vanity…
Dude, it’s watermelon; green on the outside and pink in the middle.
It must be a bit contagious.
I was perhaps a bit less of a skeptic than you (I
thoughtthink climate change itself was real but how significant it is in the grand scheme of things and exactly how much of it is in our control was open to debate in my mind). That being said, I think we still have to act responsibility and a lot of green initiatives are probably good. Just not so sure there’s any need to go hog-wild crazy.But the more of this crap that comes out … Yeah, about that.
Great point Lex, if AGW is a REAL concern, OK. Let’s do something to deal with it, but if irrationals leap on soap boxes selling old Chinese newspapers and apple cores (ie. falsified evidence) then even rational people can’t make good decisions.
On a slightly different note, I saw Avatar last night and was struck by two things:
1) 3D is cool.
2) What the hell is wrong with Hollywood?
I mean, I’m all for responsible living, but the movie was just one HUGE political statement to say the military is evil and self-serving and I hate nature because I don’t cry every time I kill a dear for food. What a joke!
How big is the carbon footprint of Mr. Cameron’s mansion? Or any of the others who make the news for “green?”
On the same subj. as you know the Pacific Islanders and AGW (Al Gore’s Wx) crowd have been claiming that their atoll nations are being flooded by rising sea-levels due to increased CO2. Well, that little charge as been exposed as pure myth in this article at the climate blog “Watts Up With That” in an article titled:Floating Islands” by Willis Eschenbach. (Be sure to read the extended commentary–lots more good technical info there) Go to: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/#more-15762 The AGW crowd have used these islands, like the Polar Bear, as poster-children for the eveeeeils of man-made global warming. The disappearing/sinking island bit is revealed as a total sham. Go see.
Before he became the king of late-night TV, the late Johnny Carson had a daytime TV show called, Who Do You Trust. While that show was successful and entertaining, today’s climate debate is anything but, given the growing mistrust of climate data sources.
Indeed whom to trust in this debate can sometimes be difficult and perplexing. There is just too much misinformation out there that unfortunately seems to overshadow valid reasearch. Furthermore, many people have unfortunately already made their determinations. They then seek out specific data regardless of accuracy or relevance to support their prejudiced position.
One source of climate data that I do trust is our own NASA. They maintain and publish a wealth of various data that when combined, gives one a good overall picture of climate change. Rather than dwelling upon isolated points or spurious reports, NASA gives a complete big picture of the trends. And unlike our historical stock market with its many ups and downs, the climate “trend is not your friend.”
NASA Check it out.
Given that NASA has enabled James Hansen for years, I’m sorry if I am as skeptical of their prognostication as I am of CRU.
I like how in “causes” section NASA references the now discredited IPCC.
What a devious web we weave once we begin to deceive.
NASA knows what side it’s bread is buttered on. Government science is no touchstone of purity, sadly, no yardstick of unalloyed truth and light from which to judge the validity of all other claims.
IIRC didn’t Meryl Streep get the EPA to ban alar?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daminozide#The_campaign_to_ban_Alar
I’m off to enjoy my daily 5,000 gallons of Apple Juice. I’ll let you know when I’m dead.
I’d go even farther than that – given that NASA has never seen fit to fire or suspend Hansen (who’s an astronomer, not a climatologist, by trade) for his constant lying on the record, I wouldn’t trust them either. Given that their two biggest projects since the Moon landings have been a) the Space Shuttle, the most expensive way of getting something into low Earth orbit ever conceived, and b) the International Space Station, which exists mostly so the Shuttle will have some place to fly to, they are in desperate need of replacement with something new. Remember, they started life as the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics, not an engineering/construction firm.
And more than a few “hard” sci-fi authors have stated that were it not for NASA, we’d be living and working in space NOW. Sad that we could go to the moon in 1969, and have lost that ability. Sad that we could go from concept to first flight of SR-71 in two years, but today take a generation to get an aircraft into production today. It’s what happens when you get a bureacracy in front of engineers and scientists, instead of the other way around.
What was it we kept hearing about it being ‘settled science?’ And that there was no question about it?
Wonder when the Nobel Committee will yank that prize from the Profit Al.
When one lives in the land of denial, whom can one trust? Apparently, only other deniers I suppose. But if X is wrong, and so is Y, and in fact Z is also erroneous, then there can be no reality.
It is a fallacy of association to equate NASA with Dr. Hansen. Indeed, they have been quite at odds. [Incidentally, although I never met him, Hansen studied and worked with my cousin under Van Allen years ago, and both have similar credentials. But my cousin is far less controversial, fortunately.] Hansen’s credentials are impeccable. What gets him in trouble is his leap from science to activism and politics. But that does not lessen his science, or his data.
NASA (and JPL?) may have its many faults. But it does provide a wealth of data for one to make their own interpretations and conclusions.
So if no one here trusts NASA for climate change data, whom do you trust? Seriously. Or are you distrusting of all scientific sources and data – excepting political ones – and content in the denial-land of all realities?
Interesting time to speak of realities.
I’ll trust Burt Rutan on this one: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/16/burt-rutan-engineer-aviationspace-pioneer-and-climate-skeptic/
He seems to give an accurate description of just how well the climate scientist understand “reality.”
When someone says they understand F=ma short of the speeds where relativity is required I trust them on that.
When someone says they understand their business, when they themselves are obviously a successful business man and have made their money thusly and are not rich from an inheritance, I trust them on the ins and outs of their business.
When someone says they understand the economy, given man’s historical ability -or lack thereof- to both command it or prevent it from going off the rails in minimally regulated economies, I start to be skeptical.
Likewise when someone says they understand how something as massive and complex as the global climate works, given our inability to make accurate predictions about it and the massive global cooling scare of the ’70′s, then the onus is squarely on them to prove that they truly do. When they say the world is getting warmer, then fine, so it’s been in the past and so it certainly will be in the future. When they say they know it’s because man has polluted then I get real wary again. And when they then say that we must change our entire political and social system and grant them the reigns of power over our lives, they pretty much lose it for me.
AGW and its proponents have claims and “remedies” that both history and prudence requires a high degree of proof and removal from the political consequences of such proof (as Cicero said “Quo Bono?”) that they have to date failed to actually achieve. And the mounting evidence of sloppiness in their research and increasingly shrill political demands are certainly raising the standard of proof even higher, for me at least.
But you do hit the problem right on the head. Everytime the AGW proponents asking for massive political control are caught flat-footed lying or making stuffip in the previously trusted and esteemed institutions of our society (be it a privately published journal or a multi-government panel) my trust in society, and I would wager most people’s trust, goes down a little bit.
So you would put your trust about the complexities of world climate change in the personal opinion of one who has no background at all in climatology – as he states in the article – but rather is a celebrity aviator (Rutan) with a totally unrelated background? And his opinion is expressed on the blog of a former TV weatherman? Interesting.
Not to be ad hominen, but sometimes sources, data, and credentials do matter, as does education and years of research. And just saying no, or only looking for and enjoying any flaws, without providing something valid and persuasive in return to dispute a given, flourishes in the vast land of denial without progress.
Fliterman,
Asked and answered and yet you didn’t like the answer. How about this for ‘trust’ for NASA and its climate data: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/
I don’t think there is any doubt that there was massive collusion and fraud in the whole climate hoax. The British justice system has already found that the CRU ‘scientists’ committed crimes with their lies, distortions and failure to follow the law but won’t prosecute due to the statute of limitations. The CRU frauds conspired deeply and for many years with the Penn State climate liars and the NASA climate liars.
Seriously Fliterman, what does it tell you when the people who used public monies to collect climate data from all over the world refuse point blank to make that raw data available to other researchers? What does it tell you when they cannot or will not describe or explain the algorithm used to derive their myth? What does it tell you when, trapped in a crime of their own making by their own emails they announce that they have ‘lost’ all the original raw data? Coincidence? I think NOT.
I’m curious. Have you read the CRU emails? It’s funny how the release of those brought about the collapse of the ‘settled’ science of man-made global warming.
Fliterman
I put my trust in Burt Rutan’s analysis which shows that those claiming they know what’s going on, don’t.
I did not say I trust that he knows what’s going on with the global climate. Clearly, and as he admits, he doesn’t.
As for the celebrity background, well his background is in data analysis, and that’s what he does in the link, analyze the data climate scientists are using and comes away saying it’s not good enough to make any coherent claims about.
It pays, to pay attention.
Furthermore the burden is not on the “deniers” to prove that global warming is NOT anthropogenic or else we have to massively change our political, social and economic system. Purely natural global warming and cooling has occurred and will continue to occur. The burden is entirely on those saying global warming is anthropogenic to prove it truly is so. They have not done so. Perhaps they will in the future, but right now they are only poisoning the well of public trust.
Fliterman,
BTW, does it matter that a former TV weatherman linked to Rutan’s analysis? Would a book be any less good of a book if someone you didn’t like gave it to you?
To try to impugn Rutan’s analysis not by discussing what he says, but by attacking the character of one of the many sources that has linked to it is the height, and lowest depth, of “ad hominem.”
This just in from Powerline Blog; The Science & Public Policy Institute has published an important paper on the manipulations to which surface temperature records have been subjected in order to promote the global warming dogma.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025499.php
One of the finding from the executive summary:
11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
The SPPI you link to, while it is populated with global warming skeptics who are very easy to quote – and quoted often are because of their controversy, actually carry little weight in the scientific field.
In fact their president has only a degree in history, and an MA in legislative affairs. Major oil companies, including Exxon, funded his previous organization –the Center for Science and Public Policy. He often draws on the contributions of fellow skeptic, Christopher Monckton. The good Mr. Monnckton has only a “degree in classics and a diploma in journalism and … no further qualifications.” (The Guardian)
The SPPI article in the link was written by Anthony Watts, whose qualifications include being a former TV weatherman, and the blogger for “Watts Up With That.” Not very great scientific credentials, are they? But they get a lot of press. Co-author Joe D’Arel is only slightly more qualified to speak on the subject, being a former meteorologist on the Weather Channel.
I will grant you that Gore is equally unqualified to speak on the subject with any real authority.
But please, give me some real scientists who have worked for decades gathering data and tell me what their consensus is… whatever the science leads to…. rather than a bunch of light weights and people with an axe to grind, or oil company puppets who have never done the hard scientific work that true and honest scientists have.
My God, would you have people on the basis of their backgrounds become immune to public scrutiny in a democracy? Why is it so easy for people like Rutan and Anthony Watts -with scientific backgrounds and general literacy, although not lifelong versed expertise in the specialty of the Michael Manns and James Hansens of the world- to tear down the “evidence” the AGW crowd puts up if that evidence were so irrefutable and solid? Why do they have to literally break the law to hide the real data? Does the fact that they’ve spent their lives studying something make their every pronouncement correct and not require the convincing of skeptics? Have you ever considered the possibility that they are not “true and honest” scientists either (as if by virtue of your career you are suddenly free of the vices and failings of humanity), but that they rely on public grant money and little is forthcoming if the answer is: yep, the world seems to be changing a bit, we don’t know by how much or what’s causing it? Have you considered the possibility that they have a political agenda? You readily recognize these phenomenon, and instantly proscribe them, in your opponents but I don’t think you’ve turned the same critical eye upon your own side. Again, the onus is on the side of the AGW crowd. My credentials automatically make me right so don’t question and do as I say is to my troglodytic less an argument than a fig leaf for the human will to power.
troglodytic mind that is . . .
I have yet to make up my mind about global warming; its causes, and its effects.
It is a complex issue, and an extremely important one. There is much misinformation on both sides of the argument. But that does not change the underlying facts – known or yet, unknown – or the important if not vital ramifications for our future.
Therefore, I am very careful as to my sources – for and against – of information; their experience, motivations, and their credibility. Are you equally so? Apparently not. Those you seem to trust are not very relevant or even persuasive. And what is really true? I don’t know. But when politics overwhelms science, and the populous seeks out and encourages those who feed them their own preconceived positions, we all lose.
Well, if you don’t find the Rutan piece persuasive, so be it. But instead of discussing his points you’re attacking his credibility, which is the definition of “ad hominen.”
You’re only argument has been to attack the credibility of those who oppose AGW, when there is mounting evidence day in day out that despite their credentials, or possibly directly because of it due to the relatively uncritical faith people seemingly put in them thus granting them far more politically persuasive power than they deserve, they are the ones lying and deceiving directly in support of a pre-determined political cause. Some of them may very well be doing this because they have staked their livelihood on research that is hard to continue to justify funding if they had “yet to make up [their] mind about global warming; its causes, and its effects.” Rutan on the other hand, as a source of disproving their thesis and nothing more, has no personal stake in the outcome beyond what all members of society have and this makes him more likely to be fair, but not guaranteed.
The trick of a good con man is to make the mark not even realize he’s being conned.
Once the con is found out though, societal trust has been given a huge blow.
I consider both the credentials of my source in combination with what they are saying. Rutan may be a simpleton, vain “celebrity” to you, but he has an extensive and proven background in drawing real information out of raw data from a career of turning flight test data into very successful engineering designs, and the point he is making is that those who claim anthropogenic causes for global warming can’t only not exclusively show dramatic warming from their data but can’t causally link it to human causes. It’s a much more null hypothesis than the AGW crowd’s assertions.
If we go for the AGW argument and wreck our economy and political system on the basis of abused science, or blind faith that scientist are somehow freed from man’s tragic nature, then I think we all lose. Except for those who love massive government control and direction of all aspects of society . . .
Fliterman
I apologize for saying your only argument has been to attack others credibility since this is not true. You have linked to the NASA site and made a case for it, a link by all rights you SHOULD be able to trust but one that for reasons I’ve linked to and hope I’ve explained I unfortunately don’t. And that lack of trust IS a major societal problem.
Fliterman,
You look a little bashful here. What ruined your arguments was the CRU emails which clearly showed that the people with the credentials have been manipulating the data for decades, threatening journal editors if they publish ‘climate skeptics’ and hiding ALL of the data.
How can researchers ‘scientifically’ refute data that they are denied access to by the degreed climate thieves?
Science is not consensus. Science is demonstrated by proving a hypothesis that others can also prove through repeatable experiments.
Have you read the CRU emails? It’s themselves damning themselves and their own hypothesis with their own words as they unite to hide the evidence that proves everything they’ve said and written was never anything but lies.
But you trust them right? …because they have degrees in global warming.
What is just as disturbing is all the climate change nonsense mentioned in this new QDR.
Eric
Yeah, we can’t even go so far as to name our enemy or outline a coherent strategy against him, but we can curry political favor in defense, and make a mockery of it, by kowtowing to the AGW Mandarins.
A less often discussed concern, in our neck of the woods, in the climate change debacle has been the Himalayan glacier melting discussion. For months, if not years, the accepted climate authority knowlege was that the glaciers would be altogether gone by 2035.
AlGore’s Fright Shop message would have dried up four of the primary rivers of the Asian sub-continent, leaving millions, nay… billions, starving midst desert lands that were formerly green. Countries such as Bangladesh would become waste lands, India the home of starving masses if nothing is done!
All hope was lost… until true scholars took a hard look at the data. Indian scientist whose names we cannot pronounce, much less spell contradicted themselves. And so it went on the other side of the world, until the studies revealed the galciers were safe… for hundreds of years!
Yes, the Copenhagen delegates knew (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece), they just conveniently omitted the mention of the report… and now it’s out. AlGore notwithstanding, the SubContinent is safe from desecration for centuries, maybe longer.
Dear hearts … True climatologists and scientists have been discussing this AGW climate con for more than l5 years on the Web. Downs and I subscribed to Fred Singer’s newsletter on the subject when it was the only voice of reason speaking out on the subject. Of course we have always had global warming and global cooling here on earth. But mankind’s puerile activities have had very little to do with it. And careless so-called “computer experts” who construct predictive programs with inaccurate data, like the hockey stick graph which omitted entirely the Medieval Warm period and the subsequent Little Ice Age, don’t help.
The thing that scares me most, however, is that, despite all of the increasingly falsified evidence now emerging, Mr. Obama evidently is determined to push ahead with the cap&tax-tax-tax bill, which will beggar our economy and our already strapped citizenry even further.
Don’t you just want to slap him sometimes?
Marianne
Marianne, you think maybe that would get his attention?
Unfortunately no MissBirdlegs. Obama is a true ideologue, and such people are never deterred by mere facts. My favorite take-away quote of all time which I’ve repeated here and elsewhere many times but is still worthwhile repeating is the one famously uttered by the famous British Nobel laureleate leftist anti-war pacifist, philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell when, confronted by his graduate students with the news their research did not confirm his social theories said: “Well, so much worse for the facts.” Even the best of Marianne’s well-aimed slaps would, I fear, have little effect.
Wrong-o, there VX. I have it on the best of authorities.
“What brings you to Casablanca, Rick?”
I came here for the waters.”
“But we’re in the middle of a desert.”
“I was misinformed.”
I mean, I feel so much better now that I’ve had it all ‘splained to me by the ultimate authority–I can now certainly sleep tight tonight!
We can’t even get the weekend weather prediction right 70% of the time and we can predict future weather in 2050? When the local guy says “light sprinkles” and we get 2.5 inches in under 6 hrs, and the next evening he starts with “well, guess I missed that call, for tonight…” I don’t have much faith. Of course he is a certified climatologist and member of American Meteorological Society, so maybe that’s as good as it gets. Based on this weekend’s rainy weather the headlines should shout “Gore declares ocean getting less salty”.
This spoof of climate science may be of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-6U5MwyDM
Co-author Joe D’Arel is only slightly more qualified to speak on the subject, being a former meteorologist on the Weather Channel.
Nice smear, there, Flit. D’Arel has a PhD in meteorology, is a former college professor in meteorology, and is a fellow of the American Meteorology Association. But it so much easier to dismiss a “former meteorologist on the Weather Channel”, right?
Global warming one minute. Global cooling another. {Looking to the heavens} “Hey, God, Al Gore thinks he’s got your job! You want it back? Please!”
“Special news bullittin: the Earth is melting!
“Scientists now believe they’ve found the cause: other scientists pants are on fire!
“We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.