Right up front: I believe the data suggests fairly strongly that the globe has warmed since the 1970s. However, the extent of that warming and, more importantly, mankinds contribution to that are topics that I believe can be reasonably debated. There have been, however, several developments that indicate that the “O Noes! Evil American Cars are gonna kill us all!” crowd has been, shall we say, fudging the numbers a tad.
First up, there’s this nugget, courtesy The Telegraph:
… a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.
…
As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
…
But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:Manipulation of evidence
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up
Suppression of evidence
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)
…
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.
For more, read this.
Additionally, check out Surfacestations.org. This site documents hundreds of official surface stations… the ground-based temperature sensors that are used to measure climate change in the United States. There are strict guidelines in how to build the sensor “shelters,” and where to locate them… and sadly, a disturbing number of them are located somewhere they *really* shouldn’t be. Like right next to the hot-air exhaust vent of an air conditioner, or next to asphalt parking lots. It would be difficult to locate a sensor somewhere that would give it a false cold reading… but it’s easy to locate it somewhere which will make it read falsely high.
Global warming is a major issue. And while the actual “warming” part of it is of course important, by far the biggest and most important aspect of global warming is the fact that it is being used by a vast number of collectivists in order to ram through massive changes to western countries – America in particular. If the scaremongers are accurate, then, yes, somethign should be done. But if the scaremongers, such as Al Gore (who stands to profit massively from global warming hysteria), are wrong, then it is not only pointless to “do something,” it is counterproductive… and ethically and morally wrong to screw up our economy and quality of life.
Here’s a simple test the next time you ponder a global warming alarmist: if they are demanding that we “do something,” is the “something” they demand we do somethign that would be good and proper regardless of whether there’s warming, or is is something that will serve to increase the power of government, reduce the freedom of the people, and transfer wealth from the productive to the non-productive?
From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of those who are most vocal about the need to fight global warming do not support reasonable solutions, but instead seek solutions that are indistinguishable from the goals of old-school Communists. If global warmign is a real problem, and humans are really responsible, there is one answer above all others that could mitigate the CO2 problem: nuclear reactors. And when it comes to actually controllign the temperature, the ability to do so via regualting “carbon credits” and the like is trivial compared to the power of “geoengineering.” So any global warmign alarmist who shrugs off nukes and geoengineering in favor of socialism… well, that alarmist is either an ignorant boob, or is a socialist simply using global warming as a cover.
And if the data supporting the warming is bogus… then the socialists need to be run out of town on a damned rail. Only then can we face the issue rationally.
UPDATE: A summary of some of the more entertaining and damning emails can be found HERE.
- Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
- Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
- Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709)
- Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.
- Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
- Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
And many, many more.
UPDATE 2: Searchable database of the emails.
UPDATE 3: Just cuz.
15 Responses to “Global Warming: a hoax?”
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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
Hoax? Yes, has always been a hoax. Humans are NOT destroying the “environment”. And as for climate change, there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING humans can do to stop it, going in either direction.
Climate, or as the rest of people call it weather, is not static. It is always changing, and given the substantial reduction in output from that giant ball of gas in the sky over the last few years we are going to be seeing ever lower mean temperature levels on this, and all other, planet.
Your example of instrument placement is excellent. In Pittsburgh they placed the instrument package off the ground, on a second story balcony, directly above the Allegheny County transit maintenance garage. And another at the old Allegheny County airport, on a big, black rubber roofed building in the middle of 5 acres of asphalt. In between 2 6 ton AC units. And then they spent 25 years telling everyone that had no effect on the instrument readings.
and given the substantial reduction in output from that giant ball of gas in the sky over the last few years we are going to be seeing ever lower mean temperature levels on this, and all other, planet.
Got any links for your claim of a reduction in solar insolation?
While the “CRU Hack” is an entertaining diversion, I don’t think it will go anywhere useful. I would much rather people look at the actual data that supposedly fuels all of the speculation and shouting and draw their own conclusions. Of course, part of what the hacker seems to be trying to show is that the “pro-AMG” people *don’t let* the rest of us see the original data if they can help it.
Of course, part of what the hacker seems to be trying to show is that the “pro-AMG” people *don’t let* the rest of us see the original data if they can help it.
Ben, the problem is that in almost any scientific field you have to run the original data through statistical processes to eliminate noise and bring out trends. Also, in addition, the data needs expert knowledge to make sense of.
>he problem is that in almost any scientific field you have to run the original data through statistical processes to eliminate noise
But what the hacker has shown is that much of the data has been run through the filter of *politics.* Data that has shown trends they didn’t like was dropped.
> Also, in addition, the data needs expert knowledge to make sense of.
This might be a valid point of view if the original, uncorrupted/unfiltered data was made available. But once it has been massaged, the only people who can speak to the accuracy of it are the people who massaged the data. And while most of the time that’s perfectly fine, there are in this case two damned good reasons to reveal the full datasets:
1) Unlike much of science, this does *not* involve classified data
2) Given the controvercial and life or death nature of the debate, any effort to hide data – for any reason – poisons the debate.
In this case, Freedom Of Information requests were supposed to make such data available. But the emails show efforts to delete emails and data… which would be illegal.
Don’t get me wrong, the hackers broke the law and if they were western hackers, they’d be found and trussed up. But if they are Russian hackers… meh. Doubtful. But the fact that the hackers committed a crime doesn’t mean that we should ignore what they’ve dug up, just as there have been at least two cases I’m aware of of burglars who discovered evidence of worse crimes (child born in one case), and turned that over to the cops.
Hacking some emails is, IMO, a much less offensive crime than corrupting science in the service of totalitarianism.
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
Now this:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170814092735.htm
But what the hacker has shown is that much of the data has been run through the filter of *politics.* Data that has shown trends they didn’t like was dropped.
Bollox Scott. Go get yourself a degree in Physics or another climate related discipline and then you can opine on data analysis in the climate science field.
Hacking some emails is, IMO, a much less offensive crime than corrupting science in the service of totalitarianism.
“corrupting science in the service of totalitarianism” – that’s batshit insane. You mean to tell me that all the professional bodies, university departments are either in on this *conspiracy* or are unable to detect it?
As for deleted emails – until context is established all I can say it that it seems an odd request – but the science behind climate change is robust.
> Bollox Scott. Go get yourself a degree in Physics or another climate related discipline and then you can opine on data analysis in the climate science field.
Sigh. Data analysis is data analysis. I’ve done rather a lot of it. Had I done the sort of “data enrichment” being discussed here, NASA and the USAF would have been less than pleased.
> this *conspiracy*
Ah, there we go. I never mentioned “conspiracy,” but that’s where your mind leads you. There does not need to be a “conspiracy” for groupthink to override reason. That you think in such terms says more about *you*.
But by all means, keep excusing fraud, money laundering and fraudulent science. This attitude, while damaging to science in general in the`short run, should have the`side effect of making the AGW-proponants look like a bunch of socialist scum to the electorate. This will make passing collectivist, anti-freedom legislation like cap’n’tax more difficult.
So, please, by all means, do go on.
Here go. Knock yourself out.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
http://sec.gsfc.nasa.gov/sec_science.htm
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=37575
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/solar-b/index.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
And yes, knowing that NASA is the Grandmaster of Ambivalence, saying yes and no in so many different ways in a single page of type that it becomes mind-numbing I included an additional link to people who are adept at cutting through the doublespeak underbrush.
Enjoy! And don’t forget to turn up your furnace.
Sigh. Data analysis is data analysis.
No it’s not. There are great differences in the statistical methods used in the varied fields of science, for example the biological sciences have to deal with experimental data where there is great variance in the samples due to the large differences found in living organisms of the same species. In other fields this is not the case.
Ah, there we go. I never mentioned “conspiracy,” but that’s where your mind leads you. There does not need to be a “conspiracy” for groupthink to override reason. That you think in such terms says more about *you*.
Your stuff about ‘corrupting science in the service of totalitarianism’ and ‘political filters’ certainly have all the hallmarks of the things conspiracy theorists come up with.
But by all means, keep excusing fraud, money laundering and fraudulent science.
Not excusing anything – but my sceptical mind wonders why the ‘delete all the Ar4 stuff’ email wasn’t deleted itself. I also wonder why the reply to the Russian scientist was not posted, and as for the ‘fraudulent science’ – that truly is an unsubstantiated statement.
> There are great differences in the statistical methods used in the varied fields of science,
Apparently only climatology uses statistical methods that include chopping off trends that you don’t like, “losing” decades worth of data (but still claiming your summary valid), and deleting files rather than letting the legal FOI system disseminate them.
> Your stuff about ‘corrupting science in the service of totalitarianism’ and ‘political filters’ certainly have all the hallmarks of the things conspiracy theorists come up with.
Nope. Creationists corrupt science in the name of superstitious bullcrap, but I doubt there’s much “conspiracy” there… they actually *believe.* And like Islamists and Warmists, it’s ok to knowingly corrupt the data you don’t like if it leads to conclusions you *do* like. Doesn’t require conspiracies, just putting faith or ideology ahead of facts.
> my sceptical mind wonders why the ‘delete all the Ar4 stuff’ email wasn’t deleted itself
Some smart people are kinda stupid, especially when they think they’re better than the system.
> as for the ‘fraudulent science’ – that truly is an unsubstantiated statement.
Nope.
http://i45.tinypic.com/iwq8a1.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/mk8113.jpg
When you ignore data that conflicts with your conclusion, that’s fraudulent science.
2Hotel9,
Here go. Knock yourself out.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Nothing there about insolation.
http://sec.gsfc.nasa.gov/sec_science.htm
Nor here.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=37575
Oh! A hit: “The small changes in solar irradiance that occur during the solar cycle exert a small influence on Earth’s climate”
And this links to a page that gives:
“However, it is also clear that since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming.”
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/solar-b/index.html
No, nothing there.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
What? The whole blog site? Can’t you find something specific?
And yes, knowing that NASA is the Grandmaster of Ambivalence, saying yes and no in so many different ways in a single page of type that it becomes mind-numbing I included an additional link to people who are adept at cutting through the doublespeak underbrush.
Here’s a pretty self-explanatory link from NASA:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/deepsolarminimum/irradiance_strip.jpg
Enjoy! And don’t forget to turn up your furnace.
Of course – winter is coming
Cling to your myth, colder is better, anyway.
Global warming is becoming such an obvious problem that someone somewhere other than the US President needs to step up to help drive a massive campaign which aims to reduce Global Warming.