Global Warmists -- Read ( Climategate )

[Qalbert]

Stop making fun of him guys, he's super cereal!

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

What I got from the half a page of the OP's link that I read, was that these climate change scientists apparently altered data to fit their conclusion. If this is correct, then what I don't understand is why no one else had access to their data and if they did why did no one else catch them being dishonest?

This might help to answer the second question. One of the alleged e-mails said...

Spoiler: show

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !

Tarnish the rep of the opposing view and it doesn't matter what they say.

[Trelution]

Tarnish the rep of the opposing view and it doesn't matter what they say.

Politics 101!

[Tristam]

yawn.

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoub...cience_ema.php

edit: and yeah, the coolest summer doesn't mean much when it's at the end of the hottest recorded decade ever.

[Jodwahh]

Even Dubya thinks that human-caused global warming is a problem now. It's a sad day when you say something that makes him look like an informed individual.

[Cort]

Periods of climate change are very real.

The question is, what causes it? There's a history of this planet doing that naturally.

*Shrug*

[Rothbardian]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

This is huge, vindication.

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

[Casty]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php.../the-cru-hack/

[Jer]

Overall, I don't know what to think of this 'hack'. I think there may be a possibility that there's another shoe waiting to drop. You know, the whole it-wasn't-really-a-hack-and-it-will-be-discredited-so-the-warmists(or whatever you want to call them)-will-win-and-now-I-don-my-tinfoil-hat.

I am also upset by the fact I see so many places saying this is the time to dump alternative energy companies. Humans are not causing global warming, but that does not mean we still shouldn't plan for the future. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have clean and abundant energy that does not require us to rely on foreign nations and how much they feel oil should cost on that day.

[B]And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

I don't really see why they were so worried, there was already a fair control in place. Good luck getting money if you were trying to find another cause, or were a known heretic.

[Thuronn]

In my field, env. sci. major, i'm basically a heretic to most people.

The idea of Global warming, or as they like to call it now "global climate change", is just a way to put a Carbon tax on you, everything you do, and everything that is involved with you. Basically, everything around your life.

The earth goes through cycles, and the biggest driver of these cycles is the Sun.

[Olo401]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php.../the-cru-hack/

This is an EXCELLENT posting. It's never been a secret that there are divisions within the scientific community on global warming.

Yes, global warming is a scientific theory, not a law of science. A theory by definition has undergone years and years of rigorous testing and hypothesizing in order to determine if it is valid. The fact that it has gone beyond a untested statement and a hypothesis to become a theory is worth quite a bit - it shows that there is great evidence to prove the point, but also questions that are unanswered. It may be proven at some point, like gravity was. It may be disproven, like the four elements of matter was in favor of atomic structure.

Unfortunately you won't hear anything about that from those who are hyper-politicized (i.e. Fox News) because they simply don't respect science, or the logic behind it. Global warming to them is simply a means to attack anyone who isn't in lockstep with their agenda.

[BerenTebogo]

Pretty sure everyone with a working circulatory system knows that the earth goes in and out of climate cycles without our help.

The whole argument is that mankind is drastically shortening the time in between the end of the last cycle and start of the next which would, you know, be kinda bad for us.

I'm on the fence about how bad it really is. GW is a great way to get people up in arms about something while taking focus off of a lot of larger and more immediate issues (fight the war on GW and don't worry about why we're still fighting the war in Iraq, etc,) but denying that we have a hand in speeding up the process is ridiculous.

It is scientific fact that we're speeding it up. As of now however the amount is seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of it all. The only argument I guess you could really make is that we're costing ourselves a few hundred years of scientific discovery to figure out how to either reverse the process or safeguard ourselves from the shitstorm of actual global climate change.

Should we all make a concerted effort to help protect the planet? Absolutely. As far as the up in arms and taking immediate and drastic action goes, well, the conspiracy theorist in me says it makes for a very good smokescreen. Fighting poverty and stabilizing the global economy quicker would actually do more to help combat all the problems caused by GW than building more hybrids and electric cars will do.

[Tristam]

Humans are not causing global warming, but that does not mean we still shouldn't plan for the future. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have clean and abundant energy that does not require us to rely on foreign nations and how much they feel oil should cost on that day.

I don't know why you would say that humans are not causing global climate change, this is pretty much an indisputable fact.

If putting more CO2 in the atmosphere does NOT cause the earth to get warmer, then the universe as we know it is broken and nothing about heat and thermodynamics makes sense.

[Gwynplaine]

http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Esse...ocs-and-emails

What say you now? Have you yet read through these documents and e-mails?

Let us have a civil debate on the scientific facts. It is a fact that this year was the third coldest summer in recorded history. How is this possible when all AGW's purport the exact opposite?

Anyways, eager to hear responses....I would go download these and read them ASAP. Pretty damning stuff.

PS: These are from some of the top academics who espouse AGW. Cheers.

Why on earth did you start this post by linking to breaking news and then asking totally generic and irrelevant questions? The news is the interesting part yeesh.

Anyways, if this info is real (and it looks like it is because investigate magazine has quoted CRU lead saying they were hacked) then this might be pretty damning for the public image of AGW and to a lesser extent environmentalism as a whole. This is not very long after news of the EPA suppressing info back in June.

The e-mails at best are read like a bunch of childish and unprofessional adults not worthy of their titles and positions. At worst it would seem they were actively faking data. Especially damning is the bit about "Mike's Nature trick".

If it's true that's reprehensible but it's not surprising sadly. It's not news to me that hardcore environmentalism attracts the worst, most nihilistic personalities. Messing with data and actually wishing harm on those who don't agree with you is consistent with their beliefs. If it's good and right to destroy the economy for the sake of the Earth, then why should something like facts and reality get in the way? Sometimes the truth has to be massaged so that the cause is served. For the good of the planet.

[Tristam]

Pretty sure everyone with a working circulatory system knows that the earth goes in and out of climate cycles without our help.

The whole argument is that mankind is drastically shortening the time in between the end of the last cycle and start of the next which would, you know, be kinda bad for us.

The cycles argument doesn't hold water here either, yes the earth goes through climate cycles, however the earth has never had to deal with the atmospheric changes it is currently going through. We are not speeding up a natural process, we are adding a new process to existing cycles.

[BerenTebogo]

The cycles argument doesn't hold water here either, yes the earth goes through climate cycles, however the earth has never had to deal with the atmospheric changes it is currently going through. We are not speeding up a natural process, we are adding a new process to existing cycles.

Pretty sure there have been a few meteoric impacts in the history of the world that did more to the atmosphere than we could ever do short of detonating every nuke on the planet at the same time. And even that had the same eventual result that would've happened naturally had it not been sped up - a global ice age.

We're speeding up the process of a climate shift - we're not adding a new step of turning cows into flying demon monkeys who shit uranium or something. A new process to existing cycles isn't an accurate way to describe the situation imo.

[Tristam]

Pretty sure there have been a few meteoric impacts in the history of the world that did more to the atmosphere than we could ever do short of detonating every nuke on the planet at the same time. And even that had the same eventual result that would've happened naturally had it not been sped up - a global ice age.

We're speeding up the process of a climate shift - we're not adding a new step of turning cows into flying demon monkeys who shit uranium or something. A new process to existing cycles isn't an accurate way to describe the situation imo.

What we're doing is changing the gas content of the atmosphere. I suppose a meteor impact could do something like that, but I wouldn't call earth-killing meteors part of a natural cycle. There is no natural cycle that provokes the sort of atmospheric changes the earth is currently experiencing, with the very large exception of the rise of plant life which has slightly decreased atmospheric CO2 over millenia. It's very possible that the changes wrought by AGW will not be greater than the overall amplitude of temperature changes brought about by things like continental drift, but this is an atmospheric forcing that would not have occurred without human input.

I think I see your point, but if this were part of a natural cycle, then it wouldn't be so interesting.

[BerenTebogo]

I'm just saying that human cause or act of god (meteor hitting the earth or the moon, etc) the earth has adapted in the past and will adapt in the future. Hell, at the start of the whole thing it rained sulfuric acid for longer than the entire span of human history on the planet.

The planet, at our current pace, isn't in any DANGER. Danger being like, we'll destroy the earth. It's impossible w/o nuclear warfare or the like. The planet will kill us off long before we can even dream of doing irreparable damage.

At the end of the day we're a very small part of the equation that makes up the earth. GW is a problem for humanity not for the earth.

Natural cycles are only natural because they're only what we've witnessed thusfar, but as Jupiter shows us, for example, natural can be 300 mile across hurricanes or thunderstorms that last for hundreds of years.

tl;dr of it all is that short of nuclear war the earth will kill us off long before we can do jack shit to it. The atmosphere has gone through so many radical changes since the formation of the earth a little, or even a lot, extra CO2 in it doesn't mean jack shit.

[Tristam]

I'm just saying that human cause or act of god (meteor hitting the earth or the moon, etc) the earth has adapted in the past and will adapt in the future. Hell, at the start of the whole thing it rained sulfuric acid for longer than the entire span of human history on the planet.

The planet, at our current pace, isn't in any DANGER. Danger being like, we'll destroy the earth. It's impossible w/o nuclear warfare or the like. The planet will kill us off long before we can even dream of doing irreparable damage.

At the end of the day we're a very small part of the equation that makes up the earth. GW is a problem for humanity not for the earth.

Natural cycles are only natural because they're only what we've witnessed thusfar, but as Jupiter shows us, for example, natural can be 300 mile across hurricanes or thunderstorms that last for hundreds of years.

tl;dr of it all is that short of nuclear war the earth will kill us off long before we can do jack shit to it. The atmosphere has gone through so many radical changes since the formation of the earth a little, or even a lot, extra CO2 in it doesn't mean jack shit.

Fair enough, I agree with this, thanks for the clarification.

[Solefald]

I'm just saying that human cause or act of god (meteor hitting the earth or the moon, etc) the earth has adapted in the past and will adapt in the future. Hell, at the start of the whole thing it rained sulfuric acid for longer than the entire span of human history on the planet.

The planet, at our current pace, isn't in any DANGER. Danger being like, we'll destroy the earth. It's impossible w/o nuclear warfare or the like. The planet will kill us off long before we can even dream of doing irreparable damage.

At the end of the day we're a very small part of the equation that makes up the earth. GW is a problem for humanity not for the earth.

Natural cycles are only natural because they're only what we've witnessed thusfar, but as Jupiter shows us, for example, natural can be 300 mile across hurricanes or thunderstorms that last for hundreds of years.

tl;dr of it all is that short of nuclear war the earth will kill us off long before we can do jack shit to it. The atmosphere has gone through so many radical changes since the formation of the earth a little, or even a lot, extra CO2 in it doesn't mean jack shit.

climate change isn't a problem until the last human being on the planet is turned to ash, amirite?

i mean there's not this little thing called money that's just as vital to the wellbeing of earth's billions as the atmosphere