Nov 30, 2009

ClimateGate vs ClimateFaith™

The story broke last week.

I've been hesitating a discussion of the story, since it seems that the source material was taken by a hacker breaking in, so to me it isn't entirely credible. But after some deliberation, and remembering that the New York Times had no problem showing e-mails hacked from a Sarah Palin campaign staffer last year... and, since the BBC has been trying to squash the story for two weeks, I'm looking for my 'I told you so hat' right now.

What's interesting to me about this e-mail story... oh, sorry you haven't heard about that? The emails that were hacked and then spread on the internet, by a group called wikileaks supposedly reveal top officials at a leading British anthropogenic global-warming advocacy center intentionally suppressing and manipulating scientific data to suit their political agenda. It's fairly damning stuff, if you've read it. It seems they've been caught red-handed grousing—in writing— that available empirical evidence doesn't accommodate their warming alarmist agenda.

Example from the e-mail: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

Refusing to allow facts to get in the way of their pseudo-religious fervor!? The researchers collude to tweak their own data and falsify results!? ClimateFaith™ is more terrifying than the church!

Example: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

And if you want to read those potentially incriminating emails in full, go to: An Elegant Chaos org where they have all been posted in searchable form.

Ah, but let's just pass over the fact that they were shaking down governments and corporations for their funding. Let's forget they accuse those who question their conclusions are the ones who are taking handouts from Big Oil? Let's also not mention that the main stream media doesn't want to discuss this story. The media has dismissed the "off the cuff remarks" in the email, you should totally ignore all that 'insider language'. But some how that same language found their way into "off the cuff" computer code. FORTRAN (shudder) code labled 'fudge factor'or. Oops. Here's a pile of other examples compiled by Bishop Hill. But the media won't print the emails since they weren't intended "for the public eye." Funny how the high code of journalistic ethics can be flipped off for, say, the Pentagon Papers, and flipped back on for their friends involved in ClimateFaith™.

For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.

But the story that's being missed, I mean other than the fraud, is that this should be the Ahha moment in ClimateFaith™ akin to Martin Luther nailing a note on the church door.

It's the proverbial moment, a tipping point where questions are finally asked. How the hell can those jokers at Blasphemes be right? Look gang, I never questioned ClimateFaith™ to win friends. I questioned things because that's what I do. I was never satisfied with the data and the lack of real peer review that was presented by Al Gore and his famous Academy Award winning Power Point presentation. (And anyone who gives an award to Michael Moore for "documentary" obviously doesn't take the award seriously.) I have contended, as with dissenting NASA Scientists that the SUN has been the main component in the climate of the earth.

I have seen precisely zero evidence that global warning is an artifice of Man, and man alone. In fact, I have seen little evidence, much of which is specious (and this all before Climategate), that warming is occurring at all. That CO2 levels are rising, and indeed they can be shown to be, and coincidentally the human population is growing, is a false correlation. "Proof" of that relationship has come in the form of a great deal of data, in which huge assumptions about relationships are made (e.g. tree ring size to temperature, and we're talking trees - so what 100 or 200 years, tops? Isn't that the entire span of the Industrial Age?) Also, another false correlation (one that becomes weaker in the last decade) is that between rising temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is hardly an issue compared to water... water vapor is a lot more reflective, but there's nothing sexy about that I guess? And, again, zero data on solar cycles - and even less about the heat sync capabilities of our oceans. That pesky water.

Also, had you ever heard of a Climate Scientist before 1996? Climate scientists are self-proclaimed in their field. I have no direct experience in meteorology (the true Earth science relevant here) nor do I have understanding of reaction chemistry, molecular spectroscopy and photochemistry, and reaction kinetics, or any experience in thermodynamics and physics to speak on any level of authority, but apparently, neither do any of these other folks. It should also be understood that if I can't comprehend an explanation in excruciating detail about how a self-proclaimed climate scientists knows something is true, then you can hardly expect me to jump on board. And you shouldn't either without at least questioning the results. Even your local weatherman can't figure out if it's going to rain three days out, but we're convinced that the earth is going to become Venus in 50 years if we don't give money. If that's not religion, I'm not doing my job right.

But what I'm excited about is that as we discover that the current ClimateFaith™ models are simply made up may raise an eyebrow or two that haven't been raised.

Cracks are forming and new revelations are seeping out. In fact, just today 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. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. Oh, sorry, was that important or something?

Former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation , rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks.

Before you get all excited, it'll be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our generation, and possibly of the age.

Meanwhile, the world leaders are gathering to place cap-n-trade restrictions on the entire world based on their friend's compromised data.

2 comments:

Peter Watts said...

The fact is, we are all humans; and humans come with dogma as standard equipment. We can no more shake off our biases than Liz Cheney could pay a compliment to Barack Obama. The best we can do-- the best science can do-- is make sure that at least, we get to choose among competing biases.

That's how science works. It's not a hippie love-in; it's rugby. ... Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones.

jackg said...

The vastly deeper pockets belong to the Federal Govt. There is approx 4 billion in funding from the feds to prove global warming or more correctly Anthropogenic Climate Change, and about 200 million from private sources.
Charlatans such as Fat Albert Gore, with no scientific training or understand have made fortunes from this nonsense.
The fact is that this is a computer model, which cannot be authenticated.
If you feed in data from the past it does not accurately predict the current climate. Additionally, carbon dioxide rises after temperature increases not before. So it is an effect not a cause.
So what you have is charlatans like Fat Albert, Lorry David, making money from the fantasy, scientists trying to score govt grants and the terminally stupid, read Pelosi, Wackman, Murkey, or Barbara Boxer.

jackg