I've strongly suspected global warming is a bit of a sham for a while, but I have to hand it to these guys.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?_r=3&hp

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574553652849094482.html

 

In summary: a couple of hackers broke into email databases at some universities with professors who lead the charge in trying to convince people global warming is a serious problem, and found (/published on the internet...) several thousands of emails discussing hiding/changing/deleting the raw data, using suspicious methods of statistical analysis, insulting their critics, wishing that their critics never discovered that there was a freedom of information act in the UK... etc.

 

It's kind of amusing to me, because I really think we should take care of the earth, not blow through resources like we are currently doing, and respect the life and world around us... but global warming is a primarily politically-driven phenomenon that has always pissed me off.  I know it's extremely difficult for scientists arguing against global warming to get their papers published, and have heard stories of threats to have funding taken away from people who wanted to do research to try and disprove it... and as a sciencey guy myself, that really pisses me off.  Anyway... I just thought this (the hackers) were awesome, and wanted to pass the story along here .

good info, crypt!

/rant

I'm personally for climate research, though I hate the way it has been politicized. Why spend billions of dollars to examine the relationship between sulfate aerosols and global temperatures, or the lapse rate in the troposphere, if we already know the answer ahead of time? These emails should show light upon the uncertainties involved, and the personal greed to keep the grant money flowing.

On the activism side, if the dirt-worshippers were serious about their apocalypse, they would be advocating the creation of nuclear plants ASAP with massive government subsidies. That's an existing technology that works and can be used right away. Instead the environmentalists want to invest money in fantasy technology that *might* have a chance of being viable a few decades in the future. The idea is to just bash existing technologies-- some people think modern industrial civilization is sinful. Progressives in particular feel guilty that they have too much. After all, if any of the new technologies became viable, we wouldn't deploy them because, like anything else, they come with opportunity costs. Solar projects keep getting rejected in California, for example, because rich liberals don't like what they do to the aesthetics.

And this fad about green jobs-- we had green jobs during the middle ages. You know, handling manure, keeping animals for personal transportation, chopping down trees to burn wood-- a lot like rural Bangladesh. Ugh. I hate working with my hands. I'm also sick of braindead multiculturalist movies, where the big bad civilized people with technology oppress noble savages fighting for their land with just their spirit. Double Ugh!

Anyway, I'm a big fan of conservation, I believe in our National Park Service, and I believe in regulating pollution. Environmentalism in contrast is just an anti-science, anti-technology, anti-capitalist cult of primitivism.

/rant

I agree w/ jhbowden. I shudder to think what our generation is going to be seen as in the future. A whole society who was so gullable and distracted by their sad little lives that they fell for the biggest scam in history.. or, one of them anyway. here's my little rant:

I'm so sick of hearing about how business owners are evil. I'm a business owner! Am I evil??! Sure, there are some crappy people in our society, but the typical business owner is just a normal dude who had an idea and tried to make it work. Someone who didn't want to live under someone elses thumb and tried to make it on their own... If I remember correctly, a certain group of people in England had the same idea a while ago.. you know.. a little while before the Revolutionary War? Pilgrims... Washington... Jefferson.. Declaration of Independance? no one? anyone else hearing bells? no? ok.. w/e. They were just crazies, who believed in trying to make it on your own w/out relying on the government for everything because they knew government is so easily corrupted and become tyranica if unchecked, but I guess this's what they mean when they say that history's destined to repeat itself.

The whole "green" movement is just a sales ploy. It's about time people figured it out. Oldest method in the book for sales: create a need and supply a product to fill that need. This particular need is "holy crap! we need to save the world!" the product is those stupid fluorescent bulbs that make you feel like you're going blind for the first 5 minutes they're on, and various other products that don't work.

Am I the only one who noticed that we were taught in school that the earth goes through ice ages and hot ages? What makes people think that they can stop what's apparently been happening since before humans existed (that is if you believe in evolution and whatnot, which is a whole different topic) Seems a bit selfrighteous to me.. doesn't it look that way to anyone else?

Americans right now are so starved for a direction that they'll jump at anything that makes them feel like they're part of something. Anything that makes them feel like they're part of something important is a reason to run blindly towards a horizon that may not even exist. Someone says "the world's in danger!!! you can save it!" and they come running en masse to feel like they're important. It's as easy as creating mayhem by shouting "fire" in a crowded room w/ small, difficultly accessed exits. And if they can do it all on the shoulders of the "rich" then all the better. What's w/ the robbin hood bs? Why are the people who've made a name for themselves being punnished by being overtaxed? Doesn't it seem like everything lately's just "solved" by saying 'oh, we'll just add another tax to the rich!' all that says to people is "damn, i better not make more than 200k this year, or i'm gonna get bitchslapped w/ taxes to pay for everything for everyone else" I feel bad for anyone who makes over 200k, actually.. how many new taxes are being proposed for them now? seems like there's another one every week.

It doesn't matter tho.. Obama's still going to waste how many untold amounts of American's stolen money (aka tax dollars) on a "climate crisis" or whatever they're calling it this week.

I don't appreciate being stolen from, and I also don't apprecite being lied to, so this whole "climate change" "global warming" "green" thing would really get my fur up if i had any...

ok, i'm done now.. i'm going to bed i don't want to think about this anymore.. i don't need a headache right before a big holiday.

OMG CO2 going from .04% of atmosphere to .041% OMG lets give up our technology and harm everything. What a joke.

When I was in college I took chemistry for chemistry majors. I got a B in chemistry but FAILED chem lab... why? My experiments never came out the way it should. Therefore my data sucked and what I was able to extrapolate from that data was wrong. I learned a valuable lesson. Essentially, garbage in = garbage out.

Real science is hard and tedious. Real science isn't just based on computer models. Real science is testing hypothesis and measurement of of cause and effect. There is no possible way you can measure what these people are even claiming to measure. Agreed with JH and Cora for this and about 20 other reasons I don't believe in the man made global warming hypothesis.

Can you imagine the outrage if these scientists were testing for AIDS or CANCER and they were trying to get editors not to publish decenting papers?

I always knew that "global warming" was a scam. I looked at it this way: When did the whole issue of global warming start? Oh yeah, when Clinton was using his cigar as a sex toy rather than smoking it. Have you ever heard of "Wag the Dog". Global Warming was a smoke screen (no pun intended). And when Gore really started pushing Global Warming as he's promoting he started/discovered the internet, I knew he was delusional.

Now that the truth is out due to the hacker's skills, I'm glad.

Don't get me wrong, I've been green in many, many ways long before being "green" was the in thing. I learned what "ecology" meant at an early age (8 or 9) and started practicing it. Recycle, don't waste energy, protect our environment by using natural products, etc. I do drive my big ass truck, as a protection against crazy drivers. And I do enjoy my long showers (I love water and don't have a body of water near me that I'm will to get into - Lake Lavon doesn't count Saul - LOL!!!). But I also have rain barrels for my garden.

We all need to learn to verify somehow or go with your gut (as I do) about the information we are being fed from the media. It's usually not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's usually some fabrication to a greater or lesser degree that the "powers that be" want us to think or work with. Apparently, someone or some group doesn't think we can "handle the truth". But I know I can. It's not pleasant and I have to admit, I've paid very little attention to the news since August 2008 - too damn depressing. But I do get tidbits here and there and I can feel what is going on in the world and see what is going on in the world.

Some of you may have never seen this bumper sticker - it was popular in the late 70s and early 80s and I live my life by it - QUESTION AUTHORITY. To me that means I have to get my own information and decide for myself what is true and what is not true.

wow... I didn't mean for this to actually turn into a huge global-warming-bashing thread. Though I guess if that's what everyone thinks, then that's what everyone thinks.

Does anyone not think that? It's ok to come out.... I'd like to hear from some pro-thinking-it's-man-made positions too...

also, http://rapidshare.com/files/309803421/FOI2009.zip is a place to download all the emails, if you want to read through them for yourself. I don't promise there are no viruses in it (I'm on linux, so I can't really tell for sure. The file extensions inside the .zip all look to be innocent, .doc, .txt, .ppt, .png, etc... but I can't tell for sure because linux doesn't get viruses), but if you're curious to see everything in context, it's all there.

I didn't mean for this to actually turn into a huge global-warming-bashing thread.

I in particular am not bashing global warming. The theory may very well be true.

I do confess to hating environmentalism. If AGW is true, which it probably is to some degree, there are rational ways of dealing with it that don't involve a return to the stone age, nor the USSR for that matter.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece


AND PONED AGAIN!

Climate change data dumped

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

There is conflicting data. So:

A thesis such as "General consensus among leading scientists is that a potential threat to all of us on planet earth (and all our offspring) may be caused by us, so therefore it would be wise to take measures that would prevent such a calamity" I would view as valid.

Politics shouldn't be used to prove science.
I'm biased. Personally, I want to reach out and grab as many untainted glades of perfection as I can and shut them out from the possibility of large-scale destruction.
But the fact that some shifty things are going on and that bad men are profiting from the political movement that the Global warming "thing" causes shouldn't be reason to discredit it.

If there is a possibility that there is something in our power to change that could be catastrophic, I believe it is only responsible to try and do something about it. Sort of like taking a vaccine against a virus that you may never encounter (but would kill you if you did)
As for what that looks like, I don't know. But if we agree to work together on some of these issues, I'm sure there's plenty of money that would have gone into useless diplomacy that we could nab!

I think a change of CO2 from 0.40% to 0.41% would actually mean something, since you're talking about a change in the entire planet. Its like how 0.01% of $1 Trillion, is still a $100 Million. Although slight global warming, means slightly more energy in the system, and IIRC a minor change in the strength of weather patterns.

Enough plants should be able to handle an increase in CO2, if there are enough plants...

Science can be hard, and mistakes are made. Still, it is better to try to know things so you can understand the consequences of your actions.
Like the whole economic crisis and sub-prime loans and such. As far as I can tell, it was not ill intentioned. They weren't trying to create a system that would fail, and had some safeties in place... but not enough. Its because they didn't analyze things well enough and didn't have enough foresight. Since what they did was huge, their mistakes practically made the economy choke.

Oi: this may be less legitimate than I thought it was when I first posted this, by the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnVQ2fROOg

That does not answer all the very-suspicious-looking quotes from the emails I've seen, but it definitely did make a few good points. I should've really looked through the emails myself first before I got excited and jumped on the bandwagon.

Interestingly enough, it was that scene with Alex Jones ranting that made me more suspicious than anything.

The other thing that kind of sketches me out is that, if you look at the economic gain, there certainly does seem to be a lot more to gain from saying "global warming is not an issue" than "we need to find some way to fix this." I think it's fairly common knowledge that politicians are heavily influenced by the people with money who fund their campaigns, and... well, most of them, I would think, would be the types of organizations who stand to gain a lot from shooting global warming out of the air. So the fact that politicians are the ones jumping on the thing and saying "we need to stop this!" is... well... confusing to me? Why would politicians risk the money from the companies that have it now for those who might gain it in the future? Does anyone have some explanation of why this might be?

I do still think the evidence for it is pretty shaky, though. Again, I do see the reason behind what Jonman said... if it's going to be something potentially-catastrophic then it does make sense to be safer now than sorry later. But at the same time, I hear a whole lot more people saying "there's such overwhelming evidence for it!" than I do people actually giving good evidence for it.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/the-superfreakonomics-global-warming-fact-quiz/


October 23, 2009, 4:05 PM
The SuperFreakonomics Global-Warming Fact Quiz
By STEVEN D. LEVITT
By the time you finish this blog post, you will understand why we differ from our critics in our conclusions.

As we write in SuperFreakonomics, there are many misconceptions about the facts surrounding global warming. Take the following true/false quiz to test your knowledge of the science, economics, and technology of global warming.

Global-warming science questions:

1. The Earth has gotten substantially warmer over the past 100 years.

TRUE / FALSE
2. Even if we were to immediately and permanently stabilize our carbon emissions at the current levels, or even cut these emissions substantially, climate models predict that Earth will continue to get warmer for decades.

TRUE / FALSE
3. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it spewed millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Scientists believe that the haze generated by the eruption reflected some of the Sun’s light, causing the Earth’s temperature to temporarily drop as a consequence.

TRUE / FALSE
4. Because the half-life of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere is relatively short (on the order of one year), the cooling effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption faded within a few years.

TRUE / FALSE
5. Dark surfaces absorb more sunlight than light surfaces. Thus, all else equal, light surfaces cause less global warming because more of the sunlight that strikes these surfaces is reflected back into space.

TRUE / FALSE
6. Clouds, which are white or gray, are lighter in color than the oceans, which are blue.

TRUE / FALSE
The correct answer to all six of these questions, we believe, is “TRUE.” You can see our chapter on global warming (pp. 165-209) and particularly the endnotes (pp. 247-256) for citations and elaboration. It is our impression that none of the six scientific statements above is at all controversial among climate scientists. I do not believe that any of our global-warming critics would quibble with any of these facts.

And just to be perfectly clear, despite all the bluster that has surrounded our chapter on global warming, these are the six scientific facts that are critical to our analysis of geo-engineering in that chapter, a point I will expand upon below. We document many other interesting facts in the chapter, but these are the only ones that are central to our argument.

It is simply not the case that criticisms of the geo-engineering solutions that we highlight in the chapter arise because we get the scientific facts wrong, unless the critics think that any of the six statements above are false.

So let’s move on to the economic issues surrounding global warming, and let’s see if that is where we differ from the critics in our assumptions.

Global warming economics questions:

1. If the Earth’s warming leads to global catastrophe, that would be a really bad outcome.

TRUE / FALSE
2. Even when there is enormous uncertainty about the likelihood of future cataclysms, it makes sense to invest now in finding ways to avoid such cataclysms.

TRUE / FALSE
3. Economists estimate that the costs of reducing carbon emissions are likely to be upwards of $1 trillion per year.

TRUE / FALSE
The correct answer to all three of these economic questions is “TRUE.” These are the three key economic facts that are critical to the arguments in our chapter. The first question doesn’t require any further explanation. The answer to the second question has been hammered home by Martin Weitzman’s work in the area, which we cite in SuperFreakonomics, as well as a newer paper that Weitzman has written. The third fact is based on the analysis of Nicholas Stern. These cost estimates are obviously highly speculative, but the true cost of reducing carbon emissions is likely to be within two orders of magnitude of this number.

As far as I know, none of our critics would disagree with any of these three economic facts about global warming. Indeed, Paul Krugman’s attack of our chapter largely focuses on the misconception that we do not agree with fact No. 2, when clearly we do. Somehow Krugman has come to the conclusion that we are in favor of inaction, missing the main point of the chapter, which is that we think immediate and aggressive action is warranted, in the form of investment in (or implementation of) geoengineering solutions. Perhaps Krugman does not consider those steps taking action.

So if there is no disagreement on either the six key scientific facts or the three key economic facts, where is the disagreement coming from?

Perhaps it is coming from a lack of agreement over technological facts.

Global warming technological questions:

1. There exists an engineering design that provides a means of delivering enough sulfur dioxide to the stratosphere on a continuous basis to effectively cool the Earth. The estimated cost of building and implementing this technology is a few hundred million dollars.

TRUE / FALSE
2. There exists an engineering design that provides a means of increasing oceanic cloud cover by seeding such clouds with salt-water that is sprayed into the air by a fleet of solar powered dinghies. The estimated cost of building and implementing this technology is a few hundred million dollars.

TRUE / FALSE
The answer to these questions is once again “TRUE.” As we describe in SuperFreakonomics, the Seattle-based company Intellectual Ventures has designs for both a “stratoshield” (No. 1) and the cloud-seeding project (No. 2).

I don’t see how the critics could argue with the answers to those two questions. They might argue that the technology won’t work as Intellectual Ventures hopes it will, but there is no arguing with the fact that Intellectual Ventures has the blueprints to try to build these contraptions, and could have them up and working within a year or two.

With all of this as preamble, let’s get to the fundamental question we try to answer in the chapter:

If we need to cool the Earth in a hurry, what is the best way to do it?

Our answer to that question follows directly from the three sets of facts I presented above. Reducing carbon emissions is not a great way of cooling the Earth in a hurry for two key reasons: (1) even if we cut carbon emissions today, the Earth will continue warming for decades; and (2) reducing carbon emissions is expensive, with a price tag of at least $1 trillion per year. (There is a third problem with reducing carbon emissions, which is that it requires worldwide behavioral change, which will be hard to achieve. But even beyond that, carbon mitigation is not a great solution to the question posed above. There might be other significant benefits tor reducing carbon emissions — addressing ocean acidification, for instance.)

A much better approach, we conclude, is geoengineering. The scientific evidence suggests that either the stratoshield or increased oceanic clouds would have a large and immediate impact on cooling the Earth, unlike carbon-emission reductions. The cost of these solutions is trivial compared to the cost of lowering carbon emissions — literally thousands of times cheaper! Perhaps best of all, if something goes wrong and we decide we don’t like the results of the stratoshield or the oceanic clouds, we can stop the programs immediately and any effects will quickly disappear. These two geo-engineering solutions are completely reversible. Given the huge costs of global cataclysm and how cheap the solutions are, it would be crazy not to move forward with geoengineering research in order to have these solutions ready to go in case we decide we need to cool the Earth.

Why then, are our our conclusions so radically different from those of our critics? The answer:

We are answering a different question than our critics.

Our question, at noted above, is what is the cheapest, fastest way to quickly cool the Earth. Like every question we tackle in Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, we approach the question like economists, using data and logic to conclude that the answer to that question is geo-engineering. Not coincidentally, almost every economist who has asked the same question has come to the same conclusion, including Martin Weitzman and the economists at the Copenhagen Consensus.

But that is not the question that Al Gore and the climate scientists are trying to answer. The sorts of questions they tend to ask are “What is the ‘right’ amount of carbon to emit?” or “Is it moral for this generation to put carbon into the air when future generations will pay the price?” or “What are the responsibilities of humankind to the planet?”

Unlike the question that we are asking — How can we most efficiently cool the Earth fast? — the types of questions that environmentalists are trying to answer mix together both scientific issues and moral/ethical issues. If you have any doubts about this, watch Al Gore’s movie, in which he says explicitly that reducing carbon emissions is not a political issue, but a moral issue.

That is why someone like Ken Caldeira can agree with the facts presented in our chapter, say that the chapter is written in good faith, but still disagree with the conclusion that geoengineering is the answer. It is because the question Ken Caldeira is trying to answer is not the question we are trying to answer. The same is true of our critics. But instead of just making this simple point — that we are asking different questions — the critics have either intentionally or unintentionally confused the issues by making all sorts of extraneous arguments.

I do not mean to imply that the question we answer in the book is the most important question. It may be that the questions that environmentalists are trying to ask are more important and more interesting, but that certainly does not mean that we don’t want to know the answer to our question, a question that the environmentalists don’t bother to ask very often because they are focused on their more philosophical questions.

So for all the blogosphere shouting against our chapter, I have to be honest and say that I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why any environmentalist who really cares about the Earth’s future could say with a straight face that geoengineering doesn’t deserve a seat at the table as the global-warming debate heats up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By JONATHAN PETRE
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010
Comments (596)
Add to My Stories

*Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
*There has been no global warming since 1995
*Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz0fZWFjfxD

mneh... I wasn't too impressed with that article, tbh. This may come as a surprise to a lot of people... but very few scientists are good at keeping data neat and organized. Filled with xNTPs, I've seen my professors' offices--some of them are stunning. I almost wish I had a camera so I could take a picture of my desk XD.

I forgot to comment on it (I watched it a week or so ago), but that TED talk video was very good. I strongly approve of using an economist to prioritize which world-problems we should put our resources into solving, and think they were the right choice for the job. I can't help but wonder how they could prioritize something like 'curing diseases', though. I mean... even if you have a ton of prioritizing skill, how could an economist gauge how much money would be required for scientists to do the research necessary to discover a cure? It just struck me as sort of odd. Assuming they did their work properly and asked other experts, though, I find a hard time arguing with it.

In similar news, this graph popped up on INTPforum.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Milankovitch_Cycles_400000.gif

Most interestingly: the CO2 level increases actually lag behind the rise in temperatures, by a fairly noticeable amount... making one think that CO2 does not cause a rise in temperatures, but a rise in temperatures causes increased CO2 levels.

This (seemingly very simple) observation was discussed(/refuted?) at http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm , but I found it a little unsatisfactory because they only talked about the increase in CO2, and not the decrease. I suppose it settles back into and mixes with the ocean water again, as temperatures cool? It's also a bit hard for me to imagine the deep sea warming with the rest of the planet... since most of the water is very deep, warm water (and gas) rises to the top, and the heat-source that comes from above. Even in 800 years it's hard for me to imagine very much CO2 being released in that way... but I dunno, I don't have much to go off of except intuition there.

CO2 level, I have read do lag behind warming from info that I have read to.

More to the point. Good science is for the world. You have data, you make a hypothesis then you publish. Then you say; “come and prove me wrong hotshots!” They do not have the data! They "lost" it. Giving an excuse like “I am disorganized” is bullshit. especially when they are proclaiming global catastrophe and the world may end if we don't spend trillions of dollars and restrict the growth of third world counters .
He is either incompetent or a fraud or both.

No reputable scientist with holds data. It isn’t done.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-a-defiance-of-arrogant-political-power/?singlepage=true

The lead actor in the Climategate scam, Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, has admitted that some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organized. Presumably he refers to the primary data that he did not destroy in attempts to avoid submitting data in response to Freedom of Information requests.
He stated that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warmings to the latest warming.
After years of hectoring skeptics, Jones now suggests that there has been no statistically significant warming, but like a drowning man clinging to a straw he still claims — contrary to his own evidence — that the recent warming is predominantly man-made. Jones just happened to omit that the rate of warming in 1860-1880, 1910-1940, and 1976-1998 were exactly the same. The only warming derived from industrialization could be 1976-1998, and yet his own data suggests that all these events were natural. Furthermore, Jones conceded that it was warmer in Roman and Medieval times — when there was no heavy industry.
I fingered Jones for fraud on pp. 481-482 in my book Heaven and Earth. If investigative journalists had not been advocates for the climate industry, they would have followed my lead and scooped the world. They didn’t because they were too busy trying to frighten us.

What makes this so tragic is that it isn’t religion that is crushing progress and giving truth a bad name. Its scientists themselves. This is far worse then when the catholic church oppressed Kepler and Newton.
The science is bullshit.

I've actually been having this moral dilemma/problem with my "modern physics lab" course this semester... which is basically the capstone experimental course for physics majors at my university. They "warned"(?) us to "be careful of stating negatives [as in, where your experiment does not prove your point]" when writing formal papers. We weren't told to "hide it", but they did say "it really shouldn't be the last thing you say, and if you can figure out why that particular experiment/data point/whatever disagrees with you, do it." In effect, minimize the opposing evidence and focus on how much your experiment/data proves. Apparently, even scientists aren't immune to images and appearances either. There's a lot at stake, in terms of reputation/funding/etc, when you publish a paper... to show that your work is important and your conclusions valid and very difficult to deny. It's tough to turn around and say you might be wrong when you have the potential to hold onto the lie and keep your reputation and fame (at least until you die, and don't care anymore).

And sometimes when you do an experiment, tbh, your beliefs become very apparent in how you process data. In our last experiment, for instance, we were measuring the Bohr Magneton--but our final measurement pointed to a value that was almost precisely 1/3 of the 'widely accepted' value. As it turns out, the equations were such that the thing we were looking at (since the measurements are made indirectly) would look very similar if the number in the numerator was 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, etc.... but try as hard as we could, we couldn't find any reason to think it was anything other than 1/2. Yet, we fell within .2 of a standard deviation from the accepted value if we used the constant 3/2, and something like 95 standard deviations if we used 1/2. What do you do in that situation, if you're being taught to explain away evidence that doesn't agree with you and write a paper that convinces others that your conclusions are valid? Sure, our lab notebooks have notes in them mentioning the rogue measurement--but our other 6 measurements aligned closely with the accepted value, we ourselves are convinced that we probably just took the measurement poorly, and we're almost certain to be told (though we've yet to ask the professors what they suggest) that we should either belittle that measurement in our paper, or else make no mention of it at all. When one scientist reads a paper by another, they don't go through each other's notebooks; they read the published article, and make the judgment based on that.

Now, where I do think you have a good point is in saying "I am disorganized" doesn't cut it when you're proclaiming a global catastrophe and insisting lots of other people curb their behavior to avoid it. I don't think you have the right to do that, at least certainly not without very convincing evidence and an open, honest argument. To be honest, I think a lot of the uproar about this whole Climategate thing is because of the moral failings of a scientist, who happens to work in a field that's been largely idealized as "pure" and "rigorously investigated." I'm actually getting progressively more pissed off when I read more about Climategate, because in my mind I'm thinking "what the hell were you expecting?" Scientists are people, and simply by Sturgeon's Law there are going to be many of them who are less-competent than you expect, and many who care more for their reputation than the truth. This is just a very publicized, very volatile topic.

I can't really expect people not to get angry. First, this is your (common person/buisinessman) money at stake, if this particular false belief becomes common enough that laws start getting passed. Second, it's a harsh fact scientists are simply not as objective as the idealized version of them has made them seem--and it hurts to lose confidence in things you valued. Third (this is really the only one that applies to me too): global warming advocates have been obnoxious and insulting towards people who disagree with them for as long as I can remember; I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but one kid who came to college wouldn't even discuss it with people in groups because he was so used to being ganged up on for his views--and that sort of thing makes me seethe inside. Finally, it's extremely aggravating that global warming advocates have, for years, confused media exposure with evidence. I wish I'd thought to do a study, before this whole thing happened, on how many people would link or cite news articles or other media-outlet type of websites, when asked for evidence... because I bet the proportion would have been quite high. That said.... now all the global warming rejectors (or whatever) are starting to do the same thing--citing news articles and jumping behind popular, conservative media voices for their support. Perhaps the ruckus is good... at any rate, it'll make very many scientists want to investigate the work on global warming more carefully (each looking for their own claim to fame, to be the one to break the whole thing wide open), which reduces the chance for corruption. They're also going to be less tempted to lie, because journalists will be peering over their shoulders at every turn waiting for them to do something suspicious.

Still.... I don't know. I can't convince myself that it's a good idea to jump on this bandwagon and cry bullshit on the whole idea just because of what one scientist does. Suppose every scientist in the world works together to re-analyze everything, and finds that the problems are worse than the guy who lost/whatever his data ever thought? What we have now is quite simply "nothing." We're back to square one, when some smart environmentalist suggests "hey... CO2 in the atmosphere helps trap sunlight and warm the earth. Maybe burning all these fossil fuels and releasing their CO2 isn't the brightest thing we've ever done? We should probably look into this." By saying much more than that, you put yourself at risk of being 1. wrong, and 2. an asshole to everyone who disagrees with you, because you lumped them together with this guy who the mob decided to crucify--in exactly the same position your ideological opponents are in right now.

By the way (just for future reference, in case anyone tries to use that argument): I found another reason to doubt the explanation in that site I linked, for why the CO2 levels lag behind warming. Their explanation was that the solubility of water decreases in warmer temperatures, emitting extra CO2 into the atmosphere. The problem with that is that the ocean contains much more gas than just CO2. Obviously, fish absorb oxygen out of the water through their gills to breathe... so there's oxygen in the ocean too. In that graph, CO2 is measured in parts-per-million..... which is a proportion of the total atmosphere. If the ocean has other gasses in it, which it clearly does, then the decrease in solubility would not only release CO2, so the effect would not be as big as that article portrayed it.

I'm not sure what the composition of gasses in the ocean is, but if I get the motivation I might look it up and go try to run some numbers to see how that explanation looks, from a physics/chemistry perspective. My intuition is saying it's doubtful, though.

Crypt. You make a lot of good points.

The problem was the evidence was always shaky. Back in the 70s people were scared of the coming global ice age.

Here is the article from 1974:

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html#ixzz0flht4xvD

The more you read about volcanoes, sun spots, earth currents etc the more you begin to realize that you can’t predict or know what is going on. There are too many variables. It’s like the people trying to build programs that beat the stock market. Oh sure they might be able to build something that makes money for a year or two but wham, they crash and burn. The problem is an existential problem in of its self, its hard to prove a correlation with no laboratory.

You may be too young to remember but when I was a kid there was a big push to ban O3 and other pollutants. There was talk about the “hole in the ozone”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
(I haven’t studied this issue… lets assume for argument that is correct)

There was also huge pushes to recycle and watch pollution in the water and air. All of this was good. The EPA was only established in the 1970 and it took time to come into affect. We won. Pollution rates fell. Even the most hard core capitalist like me doesn’t want pollution in the air. Or mercury in my blood.

Well after winning the fight to bring lead down to the parts per billion activists and purest needed something to do. And they started latching on global cooling, then global warming, than climate change.

AGW seemed to take on cult like properties. Non-believers seemed to be worthy of contempt. It took on a spiritual connotation. Most intellectual leftists are non monotheists, AGW seemed to fill the spiritual void in their life. “religion of choice among urban atheists.”



AGW seems to have cult like structure : Both share an idyllic Eden where humanity and nature exist in total harmony. A “fall from grace” follows and humanity and nature are separate and in conflict; Man transgresses God he is punished. Man pollutes and nature responds with hurricanes, droughts and floods of biblical proportion. With Christianity, there is the possibility of being “saved” by sacrificing and making propitiations. In AGW Humanity must sacrifice $45 trillion in prosperity between today and 2050, the cost of cutting CO2 emissions by half in order to prevent a warming of the planet by 3.6 – 4.2 degrees. The old testament had Moses, today we have Vice President Gore.

In cults the leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).

Most cults tend to control the reproduction of their membership. Some may encourage large families, viewing procreation as an easy way to add numbers to the cult’s membership base, while others promote abstinence for the rank and file, limiting procreation to an elite. Do AGWs seem to want a smaller human population.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members’ participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

The group is preoccupied with making money. Follow the money… who benefits, who gains power? I’ll let the reader make his conclusions.

After AGW took on this mythic status it stopped being science. It became a way of life.

Finally the back is broken on AGW and people are waking up to the fact that they have been manipulated and will be less trusting of experts with agendas in all areas in their life. People will wake up to realize there are two types of theories: those that have been proven wrong and those that have not been proven wrong yet. The AGW myth will persist for an other generation but ours Crypt will see through it and others.

Now lets say that some other chemical is found to have AGW like properties. Fine if the science makes sense then we take reasonable action.