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Climate Change Conspiracies: Stolen Emails Used to Ridicule Global Warming
Climate sceptics are blamed for disrupting crucial negotiations, say scientists.
Russian computer hackers are suspected of being behind the stolen emails used by climate skeptics to discredit the science of global warming in advance of tomorrow's Copenhagen climate negotiations, the United Nations' deputy climate chief said yesterday.
A young girl holds a placard as she participates in "The Wave" demonstration supporting action on climate change as the march begins through central London. Tens of thousands have demonstrated in European capitals, two days ahead of the vital Copenhagen summit on tackling climate change.
(AFP/Leon Neal)
"This was not a job for amateurs," said Professor Jean-Pascal van
Ypersele, vice-chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change
(IPCC), referring to the theft of the emails from the Climatic
Research Unit
of the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The allegation comes amid a series of rows that have overshadowed the start of the Copenhagen talks, where 192 nations will attempt to negotiate a new and comprehensive treaty to counter the advance of global warming, and hold the coming rise in temperatures to C, which is regarded as the limit of what the world can safely cope with.
The conference, described by the economist Lord Stern last week as "the most important international meeting since the Second World War", is being attended by more than 100 heads of state and government.
But expectations have nosedived in recent weeks, with the outcome predicted to be little more than a political statement of intent.
Professor van Ypersele said the timing of the "Climategate" row, in the final build-up to the Copenhagen negotiations, showed that it has been deliberately engineered.
The first website posting of the emails came from a Russian computer, he added: "It's a scandal. It was probably ordered, maybe by Russian hackers receiving money for doing it."
Some of the messages stolen from the research unit's files, which date back 13 years, appear to show the head of the unit, Professor Phil Jones, obstructing attempts by climate change skeptics to obtain information.
The most damaging, from 1999, refers to his attempt to "hide the decline" shown in a record of temperatures indicated by tree-ring growth after 1960, when that diverged from the actual observed air temperatures.
With Professor Jones temporarily standing down from his position while an inquiry is carried out, the old "hide the decline" phrase has been seized on by the skeptics to imply that current world temperatures are declining. This is rejected by the scientific community, with 2009 likely to be at least the fifth hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1997.
But climate skeptics, seeking anything to break the scientific consensus, have seen the stolen emails as manna from heaven. On Friday, Saudi Arabia's leading climate negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, said the emails suggested climate change does not have a human cause. He said the issue would have a "huge impact" on the negotiations.
Tempers are getting frayed. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Climate Change, has branded senior Tory politicians Lord Lawson and David Davis as "climate saboteurs". And Gordon Brown referred on Friday to "behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-Earth climate skeptics". This week the Met Office will begin releasing of climate data records in a bid to draw a line under the matter.
It also emerged yesterday that computer hackers have repeatedly tried to steal files from a prominent climate change expert in Canada. Professor Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria, said: "One of the sad realities of being a scientist working in this area is you get targeted. I have had no end of nasty emails and phone calls." His office has been broken into twice and hackers have tried to break into his computer system several times during the past year. "They were trying to find any dirt they could, as they have done in the UK," said Professor Weaver, a member of the IPCC. "If they can't find 'dirt', they manufacture it from out-of-context emails or skewed statistics," he added.
Despite years spent by scientists warning of the consequences of climate change, numerous summits and massive public pressure from a growing army of campaigners, global emissions of carbon dioxide are growing so fast that the earth is on a course for a 6C increase by the end of the century, which would be disastrous for humans.
Professor Bob Watson, former head of the IPCC and Defra's chief scientific adviser, warned that a 6C rise is a realistic possibility: "If we stayed on the road of the last decade or two, we would be much more on the high emissions scenario of the IPCC and that plausibly could take us up by 6C."
He dismissed Britain's goal of getting a C deal as a pipe dream: "I think unless we've got incredibly strong action almost immediately, it is going to get close to virtually impossible to meet a C target. We cannot stop climate change. Our challenge now is to what degree we can limit it."
The eve of the summit saw Britain's biggest protest against climate change yesterday, with an estimated 40,000 taking part in "The Wave", a march organized by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition - representing 11 million people from 100 organizations. The marchers rallied at Parliament and demanded that the Prime Minister commit to cutting emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 and to push for a deal that will see rich nations provide a $150bn annual pot to help poor countries move to low-carbon economies.
Rich and poor nations remain divided over the carbon cuts required and the funding that developing countries need to help them cope with global warming. Once again there are arguments about the commitment of leading Western nations: an impressive-sounding US offer of 17 per cent cuts was criticized this weekend as a fraction of the 40 per cent cuts from 1990 levels that scientists claim will give humanity a chance.
On Friday, President Obama announced he would attend the last two days of the conference.
The conference at a glance
Aims
To come up with a treaty to cut carbon emissions and decide mutually agreed targets; develop low-carbon economies; preserve what is left of earth's forests; and fund costs of preparing for climate change.
Ambitions
To have a 50/50 chance of stopping temperatures from rising beyond C will require all emissions to start dropping by 2015 and a 40 per cent cut in emissions, against 1990 levels, by 2020.
Obstacles
Money - developing countries want richer nations to give billions in climate change aid annually.
Emissions - developed countries reluctant to make big cuts unless developing countries do too.
Next steps
Any climate agreement will have to be formalized in a legal treaty before being adopted by the world's national governments in a complicated process that could take years.
71 Comments so far
Show AllAnyone else reminded of the Niger Uranium scandal, and how those false documents were used to invade and occupy Iraq?
Those in power wish to remain in power, and will do *anything* to do so.
Clarify?
Are you saying the hacked e-mails are are like the Niger uranium, or are the IPCC documents are like them?
The hacked e-mails are as conveniently timed as the Niger forgeries, providing the the anti-climate change side a ridiculous argument at exactly the right time.
This unprecedented 'outrage' is just too coincidental to ignore.
Ignore the wilfully ignorant echo chamber but follow the real money and see who benefits (in the short term,of course, which is what it is all about, right?).
Too true. From the Torygraph:
------------------------------------
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.
This clip (about 10 minutes) demolishes the ClimateGate nitwittery with droll British understatement.
http://www.youtube.com/v/7nnVQ2fROOg
Thank you so much for posting this!
Note that the article at the start of the video is by James Delinpole, the British equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. What else can you make of a man who continually brays "I am never wrong"?
James Delingpole has been on Glenn Beck's show recently, and Rush Limbaugh is now in love with him. No surprise.
This is not the big story.
The big story is in today's NYT:
Latest 'poll' - only 37% of World is 'very concerned' about Global Warming/Climate Change.
We're not even up to f**king half yet?
Yeesh... we are like, so doomed...
tinyurl.com/yz2eec5
That's what you get with multi-million-dollar disinformation campaigns and a population who can no longer think past themselves.
You know. It will be really great if the investigation into those scientists included investigated who did the hacking and who ordered the hack.
And if that finger pointed right back to big oil or coal I would really not be surprised.
Remember the length's Burger King's CEO went to to try to keep the tomato workers from getting a pay raise?
Who cares how the emails were hacked? (did anyone care who hacked Palin's email) What's important is the very unscientific attitudes that they convey. They point to data manipulation and attempts to keep doubting scientists out of the debate.
Why has the raw data underlying the IPCC's projections never been released. Why is it no longer in existence?
We have seen the crooked carbon trading schemes that have come out of this movement. It appears that there is a lot of money to be made from climate change and Al Gore is right at the center of that.
Ten years ago, I was denouncing the crooked science of the doubters, who seemed purchased by the oil companies.
Now I have come to doubt the science on both sides. Both sides are controlled by powerful elites, whether liberal or conservative. With the likes of Gordon Brown and Al Gore on the side of climate change, suspicion is warranted.
You can scream, cry and protest all you want about the motives of the hackers, but the cat is out of the bag on this one
'they point to data manipulation' OK: can YOU point to where THEY point to it? I keep hearing this charge, and no one answers me. I think everyone is playing the same game: 'where there is smoke, there is fire' Since everyone is SAYING 'data manipulation', then it must be true.
The GISS data is available online. Always has been. There's a small amount of CRU tree ring data that they couldn't release because it was proprietary. If you asked, they would direct you to the source (in Russia, I believe) and THEY would give you the data.
'the raw data' is missing? The ultimate raw tree ring proxy temperature data, is the trees themselves. Hopefully, they haven't been misplaced.
I just wish people would be more specific in their charges. 'the data was manipulated', 'the raw data is missing', sounds pretty general to me. It's certainly possible for CRU's 30 researchers to misplace the millions of individual temperature records they are trying to compile into a single temperature curve for Earth. And its obvious, by now, that if even ONE of these temperature records goes missing: 'the data is missing' is a description the bloggosphere can inflate into a general indictment.
But its useful to remember that CRU is only compiling data. They get the raw data from individual countries, where it was originally measured. And THAT data is usually still there. All CRU does is copy it.
No, the cat is not out of the bag, as there was no cat in the bag to begin with.
You post, like all the skeptics who are dancing for joy, demonstrate that neither of you have read the stolen emails, let alone understood them. Instead, you parrot skeptic's statements which are grossly incorrect.
The stolen emails do not compromise in any way the scientific debate. I have commented elsewhere on CD that the emails expressed frustration by the British scientists at the methods and biases of a certain journal editor that allowed skeptics to publish papers that in no way would pass a peer review by a broad selection of climate scientists. As to claims of "data manipulation", all data collected by scientists are subject to review to remove outliers and transients arising from faulty equipment, temporary changes in environment etc. If you had ever been involved in acquiring observational data, you would recognize that not all 100% data are usable. What you are suggesting as a major faux pas is simply a mundane routine in data collection.
I see this release of the stolen emails as a good thing. When scientists are able to get a word in between the loudmouthed baying skeptics, they will simply demonstrate that none of this compromises the fact that we are observing a period of profound climate change that has no equal in the geological record.
Well to the average layman, these emails cast some pretty serious doubts.
You can scream and cast aspersions all you like but it won't change that fact.
And now the BBC is reporting that the source code used by CPU is shoddy.
There is a distinctly anti-populist, indeded anti-human, attitude that infects a large part of the global warming movement.
I despise Fox news and spent most of the past decade opposing and protesting Bush. so I do not have a hidden agenda here. I am just skeptical.
Remember that cherished slogan "Question Authority"?
Why do you refer to global warming skeptics as if skepticism a horrible thing?
Back in the seventies, scientific types were constantly disparaging the anti-nuke movement. I didn't cowtow to science elitism then and I won't now.
Too bad you global warming folks can't abide being questioned.
Let the debate rage and in the end the truth will emerge.
"Let the debate rage and in the end the truth will emerge."
I think the reason many of us who consider ourselves scientifically literate on this subject are so cross is because we see 'the end' you mentioned right on the horizon. I think, within 5 years, the truth WILL emerge. But it'll also be a permanent truth by then. And it didn't have to be.
I was introduced to GW 25 years ago, in a PhD program in Atmospheric Science I didn't finish. It was a 'no-brainer' to the climate scientists then, and to me as well. So, you can imagine how frustrating it is to see, 25 years later, that among the general population of new-found 'experts' on the subject, the DEBATE IS STILL RAGING!
Polls indicate, that 58% of the public believe GW, 77% of Earth Scientists, 88% of climate scientists, and 98% of climate scientists that publish in the field of climate change. Clearly, the debate you mention seems to dissipate the more actual scientific training one has in the relevant fields. I don't mean to quote this as exclusivism; but its again a reminder that science isn't a democracy. We aren't all created equal in its eyes. Those who have struggled to FINISH their PhD are usually more qualified to make a decision about what the data is telling them.
I don't care anymore. In a few years, its not just the debate that will be 'raging'. It stills holds a great deal of scientific interest for me. We really ARE going to undertake this experiment, where some will lose, and some will win. That is SOOOO not the country I grew up in.
150 years after Darwin and Wallace presented their theories on natural selection, the crackpots are still trying to debate and cast doubt on now-widely accepted evolution. I anticipate that in a few hundred years when 90% of the natural biosphere is extinct and we are living in a dystopic future such as anticipated by the movie 'Blade Runner', the same crackpots will be frantically screaming that it was the sun's fault.
"the cat is out of the bag on this one"
What cat? What bag? The ice shelves are still melting, CO2 in the atmosphere has still increased 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and there is still a undeniable correlation between that increase and long-term warming, the scientific data of the last 200 years still stands, the forests are still dying in the Rockies and the Sierras and elsewhere, etc.
The data hasn't disappeared. This is another in the long list of phony "ah ha" moments to which those who are unable to face global warming latch onto for dear life. They always prove to be less than they appear. The deniers keep mumbling about them long after they are discredited (hoping, apparently, by incantation to make them true) until the next compulsive "ah ha" moment.
Here's a link to an article in "Nature" about the emails:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
The cat I refer to is the email themselves. This is why I prefaced this with a statement as to the irrelevence of the motives of the hackers.
"Why has the raw data underlying the IPCC's projections never been released. Why is it no longer in existence?"
The email exchange at http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1044&filename=1255095172.txt includes a discussion of why some of the raw data was not kept, including the following comment from Rick Piltz, Director of Climate Science Watch:
"According to the Web site for East Anglia's research unit, 'Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.'"
Unfortunately, the East Anglia CRU's web site no longer seems to contain the statement quoted by Rick Piltz. If you go to https://www.cru.uea.ac.uk and search for "Data storage availability in the 1980s", the first link shown is to https://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability. If you click that link in the Firefox web browser, the browser will inform you (rather ironically) that the site is untrusted because it uses an invalid security certificate. I couldn't get through to the target page; the CRU site says "Sorry, but the page you requested does not exist."
If you read the emails with an open mind, I believe you will conclude that there is no evidence of data suppression in an attempt to commit scientific fraud. You will also see that the accusation of data suppression originated with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with support from the Cato Institute and Pat Michaels, who, according to the emails, "is a University of Virginia professor ... [who] stepped down from his post as Virginia's state climatologist in 2007 after he came under fire for publicly doubting global warming while taking money from the utility industry (, Sept. 27, 2007)."
Note that the CRU site is redirecting public visitors to the main East Anglia University web site, due, they say, to a large number of visitors.
Thanks for looking into this. I keep hearing that CRU 'destroyed the data' and wasn't sure what it was referring to (I assumed they meant tree-ring proxies from Siberia). It certainly is a damning charge, if true.
It seems reasonable, to me, that a site of 30 people whose job is compiling and collating temperature data might not keep all the raw data, which is available at the sites it was originally collected.
Thanks for the reasonable and informative reply. I will look into the links you have provided.
I had a professor of Sociology, Al Higgins who taught me a fair deal about the sociology of science. Political influence can come into play on any side of a scientific debate.
Regarding global warming, it's obvious that in one way or another oil and coal dependent industrial culture is massively poisonous, regardless of global warming, and can only be a doorway to a a new way of humans existing as happy creative sentient beings.
Unfortunately, any "new way of being" is not going to be ushered in by the likes of Al Gore and Gordon Brown. I am no scientist and so I can say with utmost certainty :) that the political leadership of the global warming prevention movement is highly suspect!
I find it easy to believe that the East Anglian/CPU scientists may have been corrupt or may have just "over-massaged" the data. Unfortunately these East Anglian/CPU scientists are a large part of the scientific leadership regarding global warming and so these emails do raise questions.
I very much appreciate those few posters who have attempted to answer the questions. Much more helpful than to scream and rant in the extreme misanthropic rhetoric that borders on the bigoted* fascist nonsense spouted by the thuggish right.
*The key part of the root definition of bigotry being a the demonization of those who disagree (with the bigot's point of view)
Understand that Gore and Brown couldn't possibly be more different to the CRU scientists. Gore and Brown are politicians, for whom self-interest comes first, last, and middle. For them, 'truth' is what benefits them, and everything is calculated.
Yes, there are frauds and ideologs even in science. But, like butchering physicians, they do eventually get squeezed out because their dishonesty revolts the enormous, ethical majority of practitioners. Their honest colleagues stop citing their work, they can't get funding except from companies that rent bottom-feeders like them, and if they hold an academic position they can find themselves the subject of a peer inquiry.
Here's an example of someone who gradually got the push for lack of ethics:
----------------------------
Paul Drummond Cameron was born November 9, 1939, in Pittsburgh (PA).
He received his BA from Los Angeles Pacific College in 1961; his MA from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1962; and his PhD from the University of Colorado in 1966.
He was affiliated with various colleges and universities until 1980. They include Wayne State University (1967-68), University of Louisville (1970-73), Fuller Graduate School of Psychology [part of the Fuller Theological Seminary] (1976-79), and the University of Nebraska (1979-80).
In 1983, the APA dropped him from membership for ethical violations.
In 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association (he lives in Nebraska) disclaimed support for anything he writes.
In 1986, the Am. Sociological Assn declared him to be unethical and no sociologist.
In 1996, the Canadian Psychological Association disassociated themselves from him and his unethical misrepresentations of research.
His licence to practice in Nebraska is listed as "Inactive" as from 1995
Even if the climate change is not caused by humans - an idea that I don't agree with - finding ways of generating power that don't use coal oil and natural gas are in the best interest of humans. After all, none of those fuels are going to last forever.
Unfortunately for the deniers, the ice is still melting on the poles, the glaciers are still in retreat between the poles. The climate in most regions is far more unbalanced than it has been in recorded history. The solution from the resource companies is more of the same, burn more coal, more oil and more natural gas.
It finally snowed and got cold up here in Edmonton this weekend. It's cold, but nowhere near as cold as it should be for this time of the year. The snow is nice, but the rain (frozen or liquid) isn't falling at the time of the year that it's expected to fall. And the long range forecast is that the temp will rise, not fall. It's only -20C right now. Should be -30C going down to -40C, but it's supposed to go up to -12C by the weekend...
I agree - the real issue may be that fossil fuels will run out. However, my fear is that in response to a hyped up global warming scare, we:
a) Start building more nuclear power stations with all their attendant risks.
b) Adopt carbon capture, which must result in even more fossil fuel being used for a given output of electrical energy because some power will inevitably be used on capturing the CO2 - however this is done.
a) Death for many, unless you can figure out how to burn all the nuclear fuel. I mean all of it, no uranium whatsoever left after the fuel cycle is exhausted. There's also not that much uranium on the planet, it'll run out too. If we tried to use it as the primary source of electricity, it'd be gone in less than a century.
b) The best type of carbon capture is leaving the stuff in the ground.
c) figuring out better ways of generating electricity from tidal sources and from wind/solar is the best bet.
What is often neglected in assessing the 'clean' nuclear option is the amount of fossil fuel used to mine, transport and process the Uranium into a form that can be used in fuel rods.
Also, of course the energy used for storage areas for the spent radioactive waste over the course of the hundreds of thousands of years it takes to decay.
It is a classic 'let our children worry about that problem, we only care about now' mentality.
Which is why I argued that you can use it if you burn all of it. Something that's not going to be possible given the fact that alchemy is one of those fictional things, like creationism... (grin)
This ever more sordid episode should serve as a clear warning as the the lengths the polluters (which includes the Russian state, as they are a major oil producer) will go to in order to delay the inevitable (a clearly needed switch away from harmful energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear) for as long as possible; primarily to keep making obscene amounts of money.
Russian computer hackers are amongst the best on the planet, and it is quite likely the Russian state winked at the involvement of same, as the Russian government's interest in maintaining a fossil fuel based energy economy is fairly obvious.
Money makes for strange bed fellows.
Yes!!! THAT was the connection I was about to make myself.
If you go on youtube, you'll find ONE major news outlet there that publicizes the GW skeptic viewpoint at length: 'Russia Today'
Russia is a major, major oil producer. Every year they can delay GW remediation is billions of dollars. Put that together with 'Russia Today', and the Russian involvement in the email hack, and I think it spells an activist involvement to prevent an accord.
For all intents and purposes, Russia Today is the English language mouthpiece for Czar Putin and his toadies in the Kremlin.
As an barely competent investigator will repeat to infinity, "Follow the money." In Russia's case, oil and natural gas is one of their few reliable hard currency earners. In fact, they view the melting of the Arctic ice as an opportunity to build off-shore oil platforms in their section of the Arctic Circle (which also explains why their recent claims for an "exclusive economic zone" in the Arctic are so over reaching). Thus it is wholly unsurprising that Russian hackers would accept a job from rich climate deniers abroad with the Kremlin winking: after all, their interests are similar.
Yet surely, the CRU condemned themselves out of their own mouths (or at least keyboards). There has been masses of time for them to check that the ZIP of released information was accurate - so it is reasonable to assume that it is.
Meanwhile, the BBC has reported that a claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers might be gone by 2035 was actually based on a paper that contained the date 2350!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
If this is true, it is staggering. Real scientists in almost any constantly apply reality checks to the numbers they manipulate. Surely they knew the flow rates of the relevant rivers, and could spot an error like this!
"Meanwhile, the BBC has reported that a claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers might be gone by 2035 was actually based on a paper that contained the date 2350! If this is true, it is staggering. Real scientists in almost any constantly apply reality checks to the numbers they manipulate. Surely they knew the flow rates of the relevant rivers, and could spot an error like this!"
Unfortunately, "real" scientists are not any smarter - or any more aware - than the rest of us. They have become "specialized" in their particular field of expertise - similar to assembly-line workers.
When I attended high school in the 1960s, there was much talk about dumping the English/Imperial system of measurements and replacing it with the metric system (used by most people in the civilized world). As I remember it, the incredibly stupid educators and their equally dumb government counterparts ultimately ruled against this change.
And where are we now? Most American scientists use the metric system. As a former archaeologist, I used the metric system. International business people are at least aware of metric conversions. But "the American way of life" insists on using the English/Imperial system of measurements.
The result? NASA lost an unmanned mission owing to a mix-up between metric and imperial units. In September 1999, the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter probe was destroyed because its attitude-control system used imperial units but its navigation software used metric units.
Now, NASA's Constellation Program is intended to replace the space shuttle. It will use Ares rockets and a crew capsule called Orion to launch astronauts to the International Space Station or to the moon. The math involved is based on the English/Imperial system - not on the metric system. Supposedly, NASA would have to spend $370 million to convert its engineering plans, software and hardware to the metric system.
Any REAL CHANGE from a business-as-usual attitude is impossible as long as we have corporate-funded scientists and corporate-controlled legislators making our decisions.
"Unfortunately, "real" scientists are not any smarter - or any more aware - than the rest of us. They have become "specialized" in their particular field of expertise - similar to assembly-line workers."
I used to be a scientist, and as I tried to point out in the above post, real scientists have a feel - from years of study - about the quantities involved - they instinctively check things with order of magnitude calculations in their head. How could someone claim to be an expert on glaciation and make a mistake like that! They had to make the mistake, do calculations involving that error, discuss it with colleagues, write the paper, and have it refereed by other 'experts'. It really is beyond crazy!
My strong fear is that the green movement - which I broadly support - has been hijacked by a fear created out of bogus science performed by third rate people. Everything I am hearing at the moment confirms that view. After the Challenger explosion, an enquiry was set up with external scientists - including Richard Feynman - to study what went wrong. I think we need something like that here - not least because if there really is a danger from rising CO2 levels, it really needs to be demonstrated by top rate people.
I do agree about corporate funding of scientists - it is crazy - and in this case, perhaps this has contributed to the global warming bandwagon, because the only way in which scientists with a different opinion could get funds, was to go to those sources - then everyone thought they were tainted.
Before the UK builds more nuclear power stations to reduce CO2 emissions, I want to be damn sure the CO2 danger is greater than the risks from nuclear accidents or terrorism!
How could someone claim to be an expert on glaciation and make a mistake like that! They had to make the mistake, do calculations involving that error, discuss it with colleagues, write the paper, and have it refereed by other 'experts'. It really is beyond crazy!
-----------------------------------
Well, yes, the idea that they could make such a mistake is beyond crazy--what other predictions reach 350 years into the future?
But the idea that someone could fail to catch a typo...that's *completely* believable!
It's also worthwhile to check the BBC's claims about the magnitude of the Himalayan glaciers.
They say "The Himalayas hold the planet's largest body of ice outside the polar caps - an estimated 12,000 cubic kilometres of water."
But NASA say that "The ice sheets comprise 99% of all the glacier ice on earth. The average thickness of both are approximately 2100 meters, but the Antarctic ice sheet (14x10^6km2 in area) contains about ten times the ice volume of the Greenland ice sheet(1.7x10^6km2 in area".
I've a blind spot for numbers, so I could be doing my sums wrong, but 2Km thick x 1.7M sq Km sounds like 3.4M cubic Km to me, which is a bit more than 12K cubic Km. No?
The whole climate change debate misses the point. The issue is no longer whether climate change is occurring, but what to do about it. It's not that the evidence can't be doubted, it's that no sane person can categorically refute it, can't say with 100% certainty that these changes are NOT occurring.
Given that climate change is even a real possibility, let alone a near certainty, it is madness not to act, and not to act now.
"The issue is no longer whether climate change is occurring, but what to do about it."
It seems that you have fully grasped the reality of climate change. But you do not seem to have grasped the reality of politics. Let me fill you in:-
* The reality is that the reality of climate change at some time in the future will not trump religion and profit today.
* The reality is that that if you are truly religious, then perhaps you should believe that the lord will provide, or else there is something wrong with your faith.
* The reality is that climate denial has funded by big oil and big coal and has been a roaring success.
* The reality is that collectively it is in everybody's interests to do something about climate change, but at the individual nation level, it is not in anybody's interest to act alone or be the first to act. To live sustainably is to live primitively without tanks, jet fighters, or an international empire. What did we do to those who lived sustainably (the American Indians, the Aboriginal Australians, the Tibetians)? What are we currently doing to countries without the ability to defend themselves against us (Afghanies, Iraqis)?
* It is not in the interest of short term profit, by far the biggest motivator in the west, to do something about climate change.
* The reality is that climate change denial is on a roll right now. In Australia, the Christian right led by the creationist Tony Abbot has championed climate change denial, and trumped the moderates in the Liberal Party. He has publicly denounced climate science as "crap science".
* The reality is that here in the west, we will probably survive, put the poorer nations, who already live hand to mouth will be totally screwed.
Elegant expression of validity. There is no argument any more despite the prevalence of freakish comments.
The discussion is all about what to do.
That should be simple. Stop the use of fossil fuels fast. If governments can't do the necessary the necessary must be done to them.
Data schmata, one trip to, say, the coastal communities in Arctic regions of Alaska will show you what is happening, for real. I can testify myself of disappearing snow fields that remained intact for decades(that I knew, centuries in reality), now gone. New species and pests appearing in air, land and water...the critics need to shut up and take a long hard look at what is going on, first hand, as should everyone else, before parroting more idiocy to the contrary. Since when should city dwellers, indoor false climate people, have an opinion on what nature is doing..you have to observe and live IN IT. The arctic is fast becoming an industrialized oil and gas field...so what do you think can be the ultimate result?
"the critics need to shut up "
"Since when should city dwellers, indoor false climate people, have an opinion on what nature is doing.."
Hey thanks for providing such a concrete example of the elitist anti-populist mindset of so many global warming advocates.
Since when does abusiveness add anything to the debate or convince anyone.
Sioux Rose
CONCERNED: Right on post! It's pretty tough to argue with the truth of direct EXPERIENCE, but that's largely the thing absented from the equation of too many who think they know all there is to know about the subject.
"Since when should city dwellers, indoor false climate people, have an opinion on what nature is doing."
Well, at least the carbon footprint of a city dweller is much smaller than a suburban or rural person. Many city dwellers, particularly in Europe, don't own cars at all, and the heating requirements per person for their smaller townhouses or apartments and workplaces is far less.
We still get outdoors and can see the effects of climate change too.
Barrow, Alaska, has not seen mosquitoes in thousands of millennia. With the permafrost melting there, mosquitoes started arriving about 20 years ago, and have now invaded in full force. It is no longer possible to work outside without full protective gear and lots of DEET.
I am not hopeful. As a matter of fact I feel like I am just biding time here. , until life becomes so difficult and ugly that it just ends. That's how I feel most of the time. I don't show it and I don't act it. I have two young girls to raise. But I just cannot see how we are going to turn this ship around in time for our lives to be saved.
It must be that people think they won't be affected by climate change. This needs to be addressed. Much is written and spoken about how the poor of the world will suffer. Well, how's that workin' for us? There are just too many who couldn't give a shit. But...tie in and connect these idiots to how climate change will affect them, and see if those heads full of concrete can take in enough info so they can help themselves and the human race.
We can start by having much info and education on how all this affects the oceans. From what I've read, the single cell life that exists there, plant and animal, is the very foundation of how our whole system works. WEll, let's tell the deniers how we are killing this off, then show what happens as a result. I mean, without education, how do we understand anything. Somehow, we need to get it through their heads. We are talking about a lot of people who don't read and also many rich people who do, but think their money can save them. Ha!!!Let's show them some reality... The scientist need to get this out more and more.
I'm trying, by handing out these articles. But... we really need them to connect to the average ( or rich ) american. Part of this may be to show how it will affect economies,ours and around the world. It's hard to stay rich if the environment you're living with is in chaos most of the time.
I think we're entering a century where the wealthy and well-connected will try to ditch the rest of us. As long as they own the media, and we hold that media closer to ourselves than we do our own families, they will probably succeed.
The poor as disease vector, primed for eradication.
"I am not hopeful. As a matter of fact I feel like I am just biding time here. , until life becomes so difficult and ugly that it just ends. That's how I feel most of the time. I don't show it and I don't act it. I have two young girls to raise. But I just cannot see how we are going to turn this ship around in time for our lives to be saved."
The key is you are alive, and so please continue to give your young girls the gift of showing them how majestic that is. What you feel on the inside, they can probably feel. It does matter and just your presence and energy can turn to be uplifting and beautiful for you and them. When it is time to pass then you won't be sorry about that, right? And, in the meantime, you might just discover more to life than meets the eye, and smile and give yourself and your girls joy. We might as well not worry about things beyond our control, but we can try to make the difference one person can make, like you are doing, and at least give our all to Mother Earth and each other. This is not a time anger or bitterness are going to help change hearts and minds. Do you agree? Peace and blessings to you.
Some points I'd like to make about Climategate , and the warming lobby.
1. The Subverting of peer review.
2. Obstruction of The Freedom Of Information Act.
3. Breach if University Ethics.
4. Stacking the deck of UN IPCC.
5. Collecting Money and Power, pressuring and punishing those
who do not agree.
Melting or Cooling? Can we even get the weather for today correct? Greenland was green not so long ago. The weather changes all the time, as does the sun. I've been on this bandwagon for one reason only. The end to the pollution of the Earth, Water, and Air. If the best that can be done is Carbon Credits (A Ponzi Scam), then I'm off.
Meet the new boss(science), same as the old boss(religion). All we need now is funny hats, to know what faction you belong too!
Silence is Consent.
You don't seem to be able to read (other than denialist crap-sites), so just watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/v/7nnVQ2fROOg