Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

[lord_casek]

http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_869_en.html

 

The WMO have anounced that the 00s have been the hottest decade since records began and that every decade there have been increases in global temperature. There is a graph I am trying to find they were discussing, It has 3 lines showing the increase and only 1 line includes data from the leaked university. The rest is data from the US government and someone else I can't remember who. It shows global temperature is rising decade on decade.

 

 

There are several universities the UN likes to use and they all use the datasets created by East Anglia.

 

Also, 1998 was the hottest year to date. It's been declining since.

[Decyferon]

The WMO said only one line in the graph used any data gathered from East Anglia, the others which also show increases in temperature have no data attributed to East Anglia in them.

 

The data is for decades not individual years, so while 1998 may have been the hottest years the 00s were overall warmer than the 90s

[lord_casek]

This one from NASA/NOAA?

 

 

1935 was the hottest year overall for the U.S.

[Decyferon]

 

I'm trying to find the graph but not long home from work and pretty tired here is another article about it though

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/met-office-warmest-decade

[Mainframe]

it was global warming until recently, then when things like shai has been pointing out started going down... they changed global warming to 'climate change.'

 

Maybe this was simply a response to the storm of uneducated skepticism that sprang up when people realized (gasp!) it still snows in the winter. Extreme weather has always been a part of global warming predictions, I thought this was clear even in the mass media.

 

Other than that, I refer you back to Mamerro's post. I agree with him 100%.

[Mainframe]

i'll leave the science to the experts, but the 'experts' seem to be having quite a time defending their preconceived opinions. it seems to me they more or less came up with this global warming theory, then tried to defend it, instead of collecting data and coming to the conclusion.

 

This is an illusion. Internet research can give you a very skewed view of things.

[lord_casek]

Mainframe: scroll up a little and read that quote from Maurice Strong.

[angelofdeath]

no one wants to comment on my point about the 1970's 'experts' doing the same thing as this global warming thing with the ice age?

[shai]

I agree with a lot of what you said, Mams, but...it's goes something like this in my head. (I'm making this up to explain my point, BTW.)

 

Let's sat there's this paper written some time ago by some climatologists and the conclusion they came to was that there was a warming trend. Not a big one, mind you, but noticeable if you were to take a really close look at the data...as in tenths of a degree.

 

Shortly after this or around the same time, various industries (let's say auto/light bulb/home electronics) noticed that people were starting to ask for lower energy goods. and then heard about this study....and it didn't take long for them to see a gold mine.

 

So they asked some scientists to do some more studies. And they spared no expense on the grants for these studies...but the message was clear- "We need confirmation of this trend." The studies were done, the data was analyzed, and, well...they probably got all kinds of different results, because data is a strange thing and it's even stranger when it comes to something like the weather.

 

Maybe a couple of them even got the same impression- that there was a very slight warming trend, but it was almost negligible. Certainly nothing to get concerned about. They released the findings, and all of the sudden their data is being made into these line graphs printed on seven foot tall cue cards, or Powerpoint presentations...but these line graphs, while accurate, are somewhat misleading. There's huge peaks and valleys in thick red lines, but the print on y-axis (the temperature axis) is in 8 point type...which makes it hard to read that the data shows a trend that was something like a 0.65 degree increase over a 70 year period.

 

Press conferences are held where the graphs are shown next to pictures of oceans, dinosaurs and cities in ruins, and some of the scientists say "Well, I NEVER" and swear off ever doing any more studies for those industries again. However, the rest of the scientists got used to things like having access to seemingly unlimited grant money, and going to global warming discussions and workshops in places like Hawaii three or four times a year.

 

And all this comes down to is that the latter group got caught, the same way the smoking industry got caught trying to manipulate its data and public opinion.

 

Doesn't have anything to do with the data or what's actually happening. And anyone who really believes in global warming should be pissed about that, because these jokers probably set things back ten to twenty years.

[lord_casek]

no one wants to comment on my point about the 1970's 'experts' doing the same thing as this global warming thing with the ice age?

 

 

We're both the same age, remember in the 80's the Weekly Reader we got in school

told us an ice age was imminent?

[angelofdeath]

We're both the same age, remember in the 80's the Weekly Reader we got in school

told us an ice age was imminent?

 

hahaha, yeah, i remember that weekly reader thing!

[shai]

And it was the SAME EXACT FUCKING THING! Those books would show pictures of Buffalo in January (scary) and Antarctica and cavemen throwing spears at wooly mammoths.

 

I wonder who sponsored those books? Standard Oil, perhaps?

[lord_casek]

And it was the SAME EXACT FUCKING THING! Those books would show pictures of Buffalo in January (scary) and Antarctica and cavemen throwing spears at wooly mammoths.

 

I wonder who sponsored those books? Standard Oil, perhaps?

 

 

answers.com says it's owned by "Readers Digest"

[ILOTSMYBRAIN]

no one wants to comment on my point about the 1970's 'experts' doing the same thing as this global warming thing with the ice age?

 

I posted an excellent speech given by Micheal Crichton on which he makes to Congress regarding global warming and the ramification's poor legislation could have on the citizens, especially premature legislation.

 

It was over looked obviously. He brings up not only what you said about the 1970's but other times in our history where the "consensus" was entirely wrong, and created an image that wasn't true.

 

People should check it out.

 

Excellent point though. The world isn't covered in ice, we are just fine.

[shai]

Hahaha...and we all know that Reader's Digest doesn't have a political slant. Not at all.

[BLU]

and what about acid rains killing the forests??

[lord_casek]

ILOTS: was that based on the essay he Crichton wrote?

 

Shai: Yep.

[ILOTSMYBRAIN]

ILOTS: was that based on the essay he Crichton wrote?

 

Shai: Yep.

 

My last post? Or what AOD said?

 

Regardless here is the speech.

 

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-complexity.html

 

Here is the other speech he made basically tackling the same issue's.

 

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html

 

Very interesting stuff.

[lord_casek]

My last post? Or what AOD said?

 

Regardless here is the speech.

 

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-complexity.html

 

Here is the other speech he made basically tackling the same issue's.

 

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html

 

Very interesting stuff.

 

 

I haven't read those before, I was talking about the essay in the back of

"State of Fear"

 

http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html

[ILOTSMYBRAIN]

Oh, I haven't read that either.

 

Very intriguing though.

 

The Alston Chase quote is pretty dope. "When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."

[El Mamerro]

People who have been here long enough may remember a heated discussion I had a few years ago with, I think fermentor666, regarding those Michael Crichton essays. I was, and still am, adamantly supportive of them. The politicizing of science is an incredibly dangerous thing.

 

But it doesn't change my stance one bit, since the data still holds up. There have also been numerous essays and arguments since comparing side by side the negative ramifications of action vs. inaction, and unfortunately it seems like inaction ends up in the losing spot. I still applaud and support my man Michael (RIP) for standing up and saying what had to be said.

 

Shai, I get what you're saying, but the fact is that science has built a massively parallel processing system specifically engineered to weed out bad apples and manipulative groups of researchers. Things HAVE to go through and get confirmed by completely separate groups with endless varieties of funding sources and incompatible end goals. Institutes tainted by economic incentives are weighed against too many independent factors for their conclusions to significantly derail evidence. It is very, very complicated and difficult for an idea to get acceptance in the mainstream scientific community, and climate change has traveled the bumpy road all the way to the top against all the odds built against it.

 

The trend of people asking for lower energy goods did not exist until very recently, and the market still overwhelmingly favors high consumption items. There is still much more money to be made by maintaining the status quo than there is by changing it. The benefits and pleasures of our current and unsustainable consumption are directly accessible and easy to understand and experience right now; desire for goods that fulfill this promise still is, and will remain for a while, king. Meanwhile, the benefits and pleasures of switching to sustainable consumption are vague, intangible, and so far sound less desirable from a material perspective. The market will continue to lean towards the former, because people like the way things are right now.

 

This brings me back to belief #2, which is that in order for significant change to happen, money has to be made. In order for the recommendations of science to take hold in society, they must enter the capitalist market that we have currently built for ourselves as the most efficient machinery for progress (whereas science is our most efficient machinery for prediction), and come out winning over the competition. It is not surprising that, as happens in just about any industry there is out there, people who want to make money will try to create, manipulate, and shape things to their favor. This is critical because there currently is no clear way to make sustainability favorable in the market, since as I just mentioned, the immediate benefits to the consumer are not tangible enough to gather the support it needs. Therefore, you get manipulative and inefficient solution schemes like emissions trading, the overhyping of soundbite issues like "global warming" over other significant environmental factors that deserve attention, and forceful attempts to influence consumer behavior. This is not science's fault. Science is trying, as hard as it can, to fight against the existing forces in the market that reinforce lack of long-term thinking by end consumers, and it can only do that by convincing the people who are in the business of convincing the rest of us. These people, finely trained in the virtues and benefits of the pursuit of self-interest, have often proven to be far, FAR more unreliable than science ever has, and their mistakes and manipulative solutions are causing great harm to science's reputation.

 

AOD, it's easy to look in hindsight and find parallels to the ice age scare in the 70's. Michael Crichton does this in his essays, as well as comparing it to the issues of DDT, eugenics, and secondhand smoking (shai, you mentioned the smoking industry manipulations, you should check MC's assertions that the anti-smoking lobby was the one doing the manipulating). However, the ice age scare never had as much overwhelming worldwide support as climate change has today, the methods and models back then were FAR more primitive and unreliable (by orders of magnitude, scientific discovery and progress is exponential, not just additive) than what we have now, and more importantly, data during those days was nowhere near as accessible and distributed throughout the scientific community as it is nowadays; think about the logistics, effort, and expenses involved in sending just ONE data set overseas in an internet-less world. The number of "trusted experts" with access and grasp over the information then was far lower than today, and therefore far less reliable. Climate change data is available today for just about anyone to pore over, and models (and the computational power behind them) far more robust. Institutes all over the world are looking at the data independently and reaching the same conclusions.

 

Science simply hasn't been doing a good job of explaining to people just how much more awesome and stronger it has become in the past 3 decades. People's trust in it hasn't scaled up accordingly, and things like Climategate threaten to hinder this process even worse.

[lord_casek]

You and I got in an argument about the Crichton essay. I think I pulled them out

in the eugenics thread? I can't recall.

[El Mamerro]

I'm pretty sure you were involved to some extent, and yeah, they probably turned up in the eugenics thread even though I didn't quite get involved in that one. But I'm pretty sure it was fermentor666, where he was just railing on MC being a sci-fi author with absolutely no credibility on the issue, and accusing him of severely impairing progress on the issue in order to sell more copies of State of Fear.

[El Mamerro]

[lord_casek]

You're right. I'm pretty sure you and I argued and Crichton's essay was pulled out at one point. Not sure where it was, though.

 

http://12ozprophet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4637332&highlight=crichton#post4637332

[Mainframe]

I don't even need to say anything in here anymore. Mamerro wins.

 

/thread

[shai]

Shai, I get what you're saying, but the fact is that science has built a massively parallel processing system specifically engineered to weed out bad apples and manipulative groups of researchers. Things HAVE to go through and get confirmed by completely separate groups with endless varieties of funding sources and incompatible end goals. Institutes tainted by economic incentives are weighed against too many independent factors for their conclusions to significantly derail evidence. It is very, very complicated and difficult for an idea to get acceptance in the mainstream scientific community, and climate change has traveled the bumpy road all the way to the top against all the odds built against it.

 

The trend of people asking for lower energy goods did not exist until very recently, and the market still overwhelmingly favors high consumption items. There is still much more money to be made by maintaining the status quo than there is by changing it. The benefits and pleasures of our current and unsustainable consumption are directly accessible and easy to understand and experience right now; desire for goods that fulfill this promise still is, and will remain for a while, king. Meanwhile, the benefits and pleasures of switching to sustainable consumption are vague, intangible, and so far sound less desirable from a material perspective. The market will continue to lean towards the former, because people like the way things are right now.

 

My views on this have something to do with where I live (Oakland-Berkeley area), too. Ten years ago, most people were content to use cloth shopping bags and recycle and think that was good enough. There was a hard core group out there but they were a definite minority...but now it seems like everyone's getting rid of their five year old gas guzzlers and incandescent bulbs and putting in natural carpet and compost boxes and replacing all of their various doodads and thingamajigs with new "low energy/green" items, and this is all in the middle of a recession!

 

When I've asked a couple of people "Is all this really necessary? Do you need to replace your current stuff with this green stuff even though some of the current items you own are brand new? Can you even afford all this new crap?" I've gotten some mumbled responses (less energy use, savings over the long term, better for the environment) that made me wonder if they even thought twice before they rushed out and maxed out their credit cards. One guy replaced his year old loaded Macbook Pro with the new green model, also loaded...I mean, he can definitely afford it but come on.

 

I'm just skeptical. The auto industry was pushing SUVs and big body cars/trucks less than ten years ago. Now they're pushing hybrids. Which is good, but there's no mea culpa on their behalf because no one seemed to notice the complete marketing 180 they managed to pull. Shameless.

 

We should take care of the planet. But there's better, easier, cheaper ways to do it.

[angelofdeath]

Bump what shai said

 

A few people in my family geeked out after watching a "green" oprah show a couple years back.

They literally threw out garbage cans full of light bulbs and cleaning supplies. How great. All the 6 year bulbs have burned out and have all been replaced.

 

One thing that should be addressed is socialized garbage dumps. If plastic for example impacts the environment more than paper, dump owners would charge way more to dump this. If people had to actually pay for this... They might think again about getting plastic bags at the grocery store

[shai]

That was something else I brought up...where does all the old shit go? I'm sure the bulk of it made it to Craigslist, Freecycle and the Goodwill, but who's gonna want a box of slightly used light bulbs? So off it goes to the landfill.

 

I use CFLs now because they're easier to get, and yes, there's a cost savings there...but they're loaded with mercury and have to be disposed of at the recycling center. Fortunately I make a monthly trip there, but how many people would even consider doing that?

 

I did get a couple people to stop and think about a few future high-ticket purchases, but it's like they're possessed...they've just got to spend money on shit and they barely stop to think about why they need it so bad.

[El Mamerro]

Yep, environmentalism, for the reasons I described earlier, inherently has a hard time integrating with the consumer market... so far, its only method of success has been to allow itself to be distorted in such a way that aligns with the short term consumer thinking that is encouraged and prevalent in today's market forces. It has had to become trendy, chic, and fashionable (aka: short-term favorable) in order for people to buy into it, and this often encourages choices made for the wrong reason. It's tough for environmentalism to lie down on the bed we've created through capitalism, its body shape is completely incompatible.

 

AOD, I agree that privatizing garbage disposal could help quite a bit. I know of some cities that charge citizens per garbage bag disposed of, encouraging people to reduce waste, and although this is currently handled by the state, I think it could be an applicable model for private industry. Of course, this could also create a situation where disposal companies influence consumers, through their communications, to actually throw away more trash so they make a better profit.