Virginia High Court Rejects Case Against Climatologist Michael Mann 420
ananyo writes "The Virgina Supreme Court on Friday tossed out an investigation by the state's conservative attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, into Michael Mann, the former University of Virginia climatologist whose work on the now-famous hockey-stick graph has become a lightning rod for climate skeptics. 'In a dense and conflicted 26-page ruling (PDF) covering a century and a half of case law — including references to kings as well as modern "functional incongruities" that divided the judges themselves — Virginia’s high court ruled that the university is not a "person" and thus is not subject to Cuccinelli’s demands under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.' The 'climategate' scientist has been cleared of wrongdoing by a number of investigations."
personhood (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting-- so corporations are persons, according to the Supreme court, but universities aren't, according to the Virginia court.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that it's a university, it's that UVA is an agency of the Commonwealth.
Re:personhood (Score:5, Funny)
"Interesting-- so corporations are persons, according to the Supreme court, but universities aren't, according to the Virginia court."
The realty is that Corporations and Universities are abstract concepts that represent a group of people. Are they people? As much as Soylent Green is people.
Re:personhood (Score:5, Insightful)
But according to settled law, more than a century old, corporations are legally persons. A lot of people think a lot that's wrong with this country has resulted from that. I think they may be on to something.
The big difference, of course, is that one votes with ballots, the other with dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
This then means that anything the UVA does is public property, it cannot have intellectual property of its own, it cannot have copyright or patent rights.
Way to throw the baby out with the bath water. Look at the lengths they go to to prevent the release of information. This is right up there with the ruling that criminals don't have to register their guns because that would violate their right against self-incrimination. Anytime you get conflict like this, there is an agenda forcing the ruling.
Re: (Score:2)
The agenda is the government doesn't like being sued. The government owns the courts. Nothing to see here.
Re:personhood (Score:5, Informative)
UVa is an agency of the state of Virginia. It is not a corporation, it is a part of the government which means it can assert sovereign immunity.
Re:personhood (Score:4, Informative)
Just wait a few months for the SCOTUS to rule on Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (aka Shell). Based on what the conservative majority was saying during the hearings, it looks like they're getting ready to rule that corporations are not persons when it comes to suing them for human rights violations, thus making them immune to the law suits. They'll be able to commit whatever atrocities they want in the third world, and their victims' only recourse will be through the corrupt local courts.
The case can be traced back to that scandal from the 90s where some Nigerian villagers were protesting Shell's destruction of their local environment, so Shell collaborated with a local junta to have them all murdered. Shell payed a settlement for that one, but they're working on having carte blanche for this sort of thing moving forward.
But of course, they'll still be "persons" in the sense that lets them buy off politicians.
Re: (Score:3)
A corporation is a legal construct. That's it. People acting within the scope and on behalf of a corporation get privileges individuals do not have. Furthermore, people not acting on behalf of a corporation do not lose any of their existing rights and privileges, even if they might be employed by one. As a result, the concept of free speech for a corporation is utter nonsense, with negative effects that were predicted in its entirety the moment the ruling passed, and with absolutely no upside.
Re:personhood (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand this argument, unless a corporation is a Borg-like entity to which the component persons surrender their individual rights and indepedent intention. That is not the case in our society, so granting "free speech" rights to corporations gives the leaders of those corporations all of their individual free-speech rights, plus extra free-speech privileges through the corporate structure. Put another way, the government (which creates corporations to begin with) could regulate the ever-livin' hell out of 'em, and that wouldn't affect an actual human-person's free-speech rights one whit.
On the other hand, when a certain American political party advances that argument, I tend to take it as further evidence that they really do want workers to have no rights...
Re:personhood (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand this argument, unless a corporation is a Borg-like entity to which the component persons surrender their individual rights and indepedent intention.
The part you're missing is a century of caselaw that says that money = "speech." That's the real problem here, since it implies that any entity possessing money can have "speech."
That is not the case in our society, so granting "free speech" rights to corporations gives the leaders of those corporations all of their individual free-speech rights, plus extra free-speech privileges through the corporate structure.
Well, one could also argue that many people enter into corporations for the very purposes of "speaking" more loudly. For example, there are many non-profit corporations (like the ACLU, which was behind the Supreme Court ruling by the way) which exist primarily to "speak" for the viewpoints of those who are members of the corporation. Almost all political non-profit groups or issue groups (PETA, etc.) are corporations whose primary purpose is to "speak" for their members.
Also, roughly 97% of corporations are ones with capital of a few million dollars or less. Many small local businesses are "corporations" only in name because of the variety tax benefits, etc. the legal status provides. Effectively, these "corporations" only represent the owner or perhaps a small group of partners. When the vast majority of "corporations" want to speak, they are effectively speaking with the same voice as an individual. All of these corporations were barred from free speech, not just the giant mega-corporations.
Put another way, the government (which creates corporations to begin with) could regulate the ever-livin' hell out of 'em, and that wouldn't affect an actual human-person's free-speech rights one whit.
Perhaps, and they do regulate corporations in a lot of ways.
The problem that the Supreme Court identified -- which is a REAL problem -- is that in today's world of mega-corporations and huge conglomerates, one group of corporations do have completely unfettered speech in the political arena, namely so-called "media" companies.
But why should Fox News get to run its propaganda before an election (just because it claims to be a "news" corporation), while the ACLU can't provide you with actual facts about candidates? The Supreme Court ruled that in this day and age there really isn't a good measure to differentiate between these so-called "media" corporations and some other mega-corporation with its own political interests.
This is a real problem, and if you think about it at all, things were pretty ambiguous and unfair before. I don't think we solve the problem by the Court's ruling, because the underlying issue is the legal assumption that money = speech.
Re: (Score:3)
They can't vote, but for the Lord knows what reason, we allow them to bribe our officials legally through campaign donations.
Re:personhood (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh man not this shit again. Money is bribery. Speech is speech. Speak with your words, not your dollars.
Re: (Score:3)
I assume that the judge took a technicality because the other option was to allow a truly frivolous suit against Mann for basically doing a good job of being a scientist. They do that all the time.
The fact is that a politician misused his position to harass a climate scientist who produced some inconvenient studies, and the court decided that this wasn't going to stand.
King's privilege (Score:4, Insightful)
From the decision:
Government is above the law. All hail the king. Welcome to Braveheart.
Re: (Score:3)
From FATA [taf.org]:
Re: (Score:3)
Again and again. And again! Ad nauseam
For the millionth time, the "trick" in question referred to a statistical technique used to suppress bad data that was known to be bad, known to be in disagreement with the rest of the data they had, and what it actually did was to tack on real observation to the end of the graph.
All of Mann's research has been out in the open. Anyone can read the papers he's published.
If he can't perform his research, because his conclusions are inconvenient to a politician, and gets h
The court weaseled out of this one (Score:3)
Clearly the court didn't want to pass judgement on the nature of the case (no pun intended) and instead chose to throw it out on an Angelina Jolie-ish thin concept.
It also sets an interesting precedent. If, as the court claims, the university is not a person as a requirement for a legal claim on the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, then one could argue that no university should be allowed to get taxpayer funding because there can be no oversight.
Can't be sued? (Score:3)
Wait, I'm confused. Corporations are persons that can be sued but universities aren't?
Re: (Score:3)
UVa is a state school, not a private entity. As such it enjoys sovereign immunity.
Re:Can't be sued? (Score:5, Informative)
The university is probably a "person" whenever it wants to be, but isn't whenever it wants to be.
We're fighting a similar case in New Hampshire. A couple decades ago, the University of N.H. employed their legal "political subdivision" label in order to protect themselves against another party in a lawsuit. And the court duly recognized their status as a political subdivision of the State of New Hampshire.
So recently a group of activists tried to challenge [freekeene.com] the UNH's firearms policy by pointing to N.H. RSA 159:26, which states that no political subdivision of New Hampshire can regulate firearms; only the Legislature may do so. The university of course tried to argue they're not a political subdivision.
If the legal system here was even remotely non-corrupt, this would be a slam dunk. The principle employed here is called "collateral estoppel" in legal parlance. "You can't have it both ways" might be another way to describe it. Or "blatant hypocrisy."
Guess which way the Superior Court ruled.
Agreed (Score:2)
If, as the court claims, the university is not a person as a requirement for a legal claim on the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, then one could argue that no university should be allowed to get taxpayer funding because there can be no oversight.
This is nonsense. You can oversee a university just as you can oversee a person. It has nothing to do with the Act.
Read Republicans (Score:3, Interesting)
When was the last time a Rebublican read a science book? First, carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas. It absorbs infrared and converts to kinetic energy. This is the basis of IR spectroscopy. Alternatively, read about the planet Venus. Then, burning fossil fuels will dump carbon dioxide that has been fixed by living things over the last 500 million years. That is why they are called fossil. Putting that together, things are going to warm up if we keep burning the fuel. I dont need a Phd to figure that out
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, as one poster above showed, water vapor contributes more than 5x what carbon dioxide does....
Good. Now learn about atmospheric retention times and the difference between forcings and feedbacks. Then, you might add something meaningful.
Astonishing anti-physics nonsense by denialists. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd find it funny if it weren't so depressing. The denialists of the human influence on climate use these two talking points over and over, not even understanding enough science (or more likely, not caring about truth as opposed to winning economically) that they are simultaneously contradictory!
Point 1) Water, not CO2, is the dominant greenhouse forcing!!!
Point 2) All those evil computer models that them hoaxing climate modelers put out are lying, because they stuff in these mumbo-jumbo complex feedforwards to the sensitivity computed by God's-honest-truth-Bolztzmann, in order to make the problem "alarming" instead of insignificant.
In scientific truth, yes water is a major greenhouse effect. And that's just the point of those supposedly 'mumbo-jumbo' feedfowards---it's the fact that as air warms up, it can absorb more water vapor, and yes this extra water vapor (clear, not clouds) certainly does ADD to the greenhouse effect. D'oh!
So the more you push #1 (which is true), the more you justify including the feedfowards which result in the mainstream estimate of climate sensitivity which points to a serious problem in the future. In fact it's misleading NOT to include these feedfowards.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, water is the dominant greenhouse gas, and all of them together add 30C to the Earth's average temperature. We are worried about CO2 forcing another 3-6C. The Moon, which is at the same average distance from the Sun as we are, has a global average temperature of -15C (yes, it's much hotter on the day side, but it's also much colder on the night side). The Earth has an average temperature of +15C. The difference is due to our atmosphere slowing down heat leaking out. So merely saying water is the ma
Re: (Score:3)
And if you had read up how the models work, they ALL include the sun. And I'm sure you have a link for that paper, right?
Re: (Score:3)
That's the whole damn problem! We're right now in a part of the solar cycle where we *should* be getting cooling, and we're seeing warming instead.
Look here [woodfortrees.org] - the relatively flat solar activity, vs the rising temperatures... Something's making the Earth retain heat beyond the heating and cooling caused by solar cycles. That something is pretty much us...
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody's got an agenda.
There is no fact.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." [wikiquote.org]
--Phillip K. Dick.
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
So... other than "experts" (nice fear quotes), who should they be listening to? The layman who doesn't know any better?
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
There is no such thing as "science necessitating legislation". Scientific truth doesn't need anybody's legal imprimatur.
Also, public safety is one of the central reasons we have laws. If you disagree with the legal protection of public safety, fine, but then argue that honestly. Don't mask your argument with extraneous BS about "science necessitating legislation".
Re: (Score:3)
So you think it was wrong that when science postulated that there were invisible organisms that created disease and were spread by shitting in, or next to, drinking water and the conservatives refused to believe it, including some who wouldn't even look in a microscope because it was patently impossible for there to be invisible organisms, that it was wrong to legislate no shitting in the drinking water?
Re: (Score:3)
Industry does spread salt uniformly through out the restaurant and neighborhood. Just about any foodstuff purchased has unhealthy amounts of salt. People have been conditioned that excessive salt is needed for taste yet it is very unhealthy. A good example is baby food. When first introduced 80 or 90 years ago baby food had no added salt and babies loved it. Nice jar of carrots in a form that they could eat. Meanwhile the mothers, who had already been conditioned that food needed excessive amounts of salt,
Policy or science [Re:An agenda] (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with environmentalism isn't the actual facts.
The problem is that once people try to use these facts to justify policies that will harm other people, the victims of those new policies will try to dispute the facts in order to discredit the policies that are harming them.
Yes, exactly: a good deal of the criticism that is purported to be skepticism of the science (and the scientists) is actually aimed at discrediting the policy implications.
The unexpected consequence is that, since it apparently much easier to cast doubt on the science than to rationally discuss policy, there has been almost no discussion of the proposed policies.
Of course, policy discussions are so full of boobytraps and ideological landmines in the US, that's not surprising.
Re: (Score:3)
"Yes, exactly: a good deal of the criticism that is purported to be skepticism of the science (and the scientists) is actually aimed at discrediting the policy implications.
The unexpected consequence is that, since it apparently much easier to cast doubt on the science than to rationally discuss policy, there has been almost no discussion of the proposed policies."
Yes, but it's really simple. A rational discussion of the policy based on facts shows that one side has a proprietary interest in what most woul
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hardly a technocracy. If it was, you would probably be facing the end of using petroleum products for producing energy tomorrow. As it is, governments do just enough to appear to be doing something.
But beyond that the question becomes "If the vast and overwhelming majority of researchers in a certain field say [i]X[/i] is happening", your response should be:
A. Wow, that sounds serious, what are the solutions?
or
B. That would cost a few billion a year, so fuck you.
Paging Minister Hacker (Score:4, Interesting)
"As it is, governments do just enough to appear to be doing something." How it is that this is not a Sir Humphrey Appleby quote astounds me!
Perhaps one of these quotes could work in its place:
"Two kinds of government chair correspond with the two kinds of minister: one sort folds up instantly and the other sort goes round and round in circles."
"'The Government's position' means 'the best explanation of past events that cannot be disproved by available facts'."
"In government, many people have the power to stop things happening but almost nobody has the power to make things happen. The system has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce."
"A Civil Service computer strike would bring government to a standstill if it were not for the fact that it is already."
***
Topically speaking, I've notice the biggest problem to accepting a scientific understanding comes in the form of two anti-science options: 1) A scientifically sounding think tank or lobbyist's research seems directly in conflict with reality but fits well other people's preferred realities and 2) All scientific understanding is really an indoctrination technique, and only the ignorant can see reality.
Of course, neither is particularly exclusive in any field.
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom doesn't mean liberation from reality. The universe actually doesn't give one sweet fuck about your freedoms.
Re:An agenda (Score:4)
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell that to the computer you're using which depends on two centuries worth of scientific advancement. The goal of science is to account for bias and get closer to truth in spite of it, and it's obviously worked. The same system that brought you electromagnatism, antibiotics, and plastic has now brought you climate change. You can bet against them but history isn't on your side.
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a weak argument -- essentially a mass scale argument from authority. The strong argument is that the data support the conclusion that the climate is warming and that much of that warming is due to human activity -- and no other possible cause has been shown to be sufficient to cause what has been observed.
THAT is why the smart money is on continued warming and on conservation or other measures to contain it.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the data supports that the climate is warming due to a feedback loop that's unrolling in the oceans that's warming the planet. And yes, the initial push that started this feedback loop is started by a combination of human and volcanic activity. That push also occured centuries ago, long before your grandfather was born.
The evolution of climate, so the models tell us, is like a grenade exploding in slow motion, it's about a third through the fireball. And what we're trying to do is to put the pin ba
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
An appeal to authority is only fallacious when the authorities being invoked are not in fact authorities. If you defend a diagnosis of macular degeneration because your dentist says that's what you have, that's a fallacious appeal to authority. If you defend a diagnosis of macular degeneration because your opthamologist says that's what you have, it is not fallacious.
Re: (Score:3)
the smart money is on continued warming and on conservation or other measures to contain it.
The smarter money is on the developing world making containment measures irrelevant.
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
It also gave us eugenics, Aether, the fixed universe, phrenology, and Fleischmann/Pons cold fusion.
Many scientific theories that are accepted as truth at the time turn out to be false, or are superceeded as science finds out more.
And sometimes, as in the case of phrenology and eugenics, people are harmed in the name of science.
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
How exactly is eugenics (as a science) a bad thing? As a science all it is is the observation that we humans have changed the evoluionary pressures on our own species, with the exensino that it is in ways that most likely will favor mutations that we don't really want. For example poor eyesight is no longer a negative evelutioary pressure so you can expect it to grow in the general population.
That is the science bit, what you are probably objecting to are the mass steriliztions in the US (if you are aware of them) or the influence those same ideas had on some of the Nazi justifications for the death camps. But the science is reposnible for neither, just as you can't blame the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge on the philophy of equality.
And if you think that eugenics (the science) has in any way been proven false, then you are completely mistaken.
Re: (Score:3)
Eugenics is a bad thing because A. it violates basic human rights, B. it pretty much rejects the Darwinian notion that the more variation the better, and C. it has historically been applied as much to socioeconomic factors as to anything particularly hereditary.
Re: (Score:3)
But it's an excellent lesson in why we need to separate scientific findings from policy debates, which necessarily need to include much more considerations and a great many more factors must be weighed as trade-offs.
The option being... what? Policy framed with no scientific input?
Just as eugenics was used to justify mass sterilizations, ultimately climate change is being used to justify eliminating about 80% of the global human population.
I'd really like a citation for that little statistic in there...
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Informative)
I'd really like a citation for that little statistic in there...
Since you asked, most Americans don't grasp it yet, but the truth is that the global elite are absolutely obsessed with population control. In fact, there is a growing consensus among the global elite that they need to get rid of 80 to 90 percent of us. The number one commandment of the infamous Georgia Guidestones is this: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Unfortunately, a very high percentage of our global leaders actually believe in this stuff.
This philosophy is now regularly being reflected in official UN documents. For example, the March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief begins with the following statement:
This agenda showed up again when the United Nations Population Fund released its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009 entitled "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate".
The population control agenda is also regularly showing up in our newspapers now. In a recent editorial for the New York Times entitled "The Earth Is Full", Thomas L. Friedman made the following statement:
But Friedman is quite moderate compared to many others. For example, James Lovelock stated in an interview with the Guardian earlier this year that "democracy must be put on hold" if the fight against global warming is going to be successful and that only "a few people with authority" should be permitted to rule the planet until the crisis is solved.
The Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola is openly calling for climate change deniers to be "re-educated", for a world government to be established and for humans to be forcibly sterilized and for the majority of humans to be killed.
This agenda is even being taught by professors at many top universities. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka is a very prominent advocate of radical human population control. In an article entitled "What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know", Pianka said:
CNN Founder Ted Turner
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Informative)
Since you asked, most Americans don't grasp it yet, but the truth is that the global elite are absolutely obsessed with population control. In fact, there is a growing consensus among the global elite that they need to get rid of 80 to 90 percent of us. The number one commandment of the infamous Georgia Guidestones is this: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Unfortunately, a very high percentage of our global leaders actually believe in this stuff.
OK, I'm no American, but I'll play...
First, let's keep the anonymous polemics out of this, eh?
This philosophy is now regularly being reflected in official UN documents. For example, the March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief begins with the following statement:
Not related to climate change, but let's read the report [un.org]:
Fast population growth, fueled by high fertility, hinders the reduction of poverty and the achievement of other internationally agreed development goals. While fertility has declined throughout the developing world since the 1970s, most of the least developed countries still have total fertility levels above 5 children per woman.
5 children per women is definitely a fertility level that's unsustainable in Nigeria. Or even here in India. This is nothing new - those countries with stable governments have been more or less going in the direction of lower fertility rates for decades. See this [gapminder.org] Gapminder plot, for example. In any case, the report says nothing about global warming. It's about health and happiness, not warming.
This agenda showed up again when the United Nations Population Fund released its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009 entitled Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate".
That would be this one [unfpa.org]
The interesting thing is, this isn't really talking about eliminating 80% of the population of the world. Both reports talk about fertility rates, family planning and improved health. The second one is a little hyperbolic about climate change, but nevertheless, it's not a call to cull 80% of the world's population.
The population control agenda is also regularly showing up in our newspapers now. In a recent editorial for the New York Times entitled "The Earth Is Full", Thomas L. Friedman made the following statement:
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Informative)
And your own technique is a very common one,
You are right. Debunking is a common technique.
my assertion and defense of the very groups and powerful, wealthy people advocating depopulation makes your own agenda questionable to an objective observer.
I'm really curious what you would guess my agenda is...
No, seriously. Let me know.
the first quote starts on the bottom of page 21,
Now that gives it the missing context. See, you put it into a context of depopulation, but the entire chapter is about population growth, and on p. 22 it puts the necessary depth into the debate by pointing out that the relationship is varied and in some countries the per-capita emissions are even falling.
If you read the entire report - or just a few chapters - it doesn't seem to support your claim that some mysterious global elite is planning to kill most of the world population in the slightest. It's a calm review of what we know about the relationship between various factors such as population, consumption, transporation, energy consumption, etc.
As for Ted Turner's quote, it (along with the entire context and his views) was first published in an interview given in 1996 to the magazine of the American conservation organisation The Audubon Society
The reference is all over the net. The Audubon Magazine website itself doesn't seem to know about it: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/search/node/ted%20turner [audubonmagazine.org]
Quotes get made up all the time, and once enough people are quoting it, everyone thinks it's real. There are a nice number of examples for this effect, and too few journalists who actually check the sources. In fact, one of the pet /. topics has an example: The estimate for losses to movie "piracy" are such a thing. Someone once made up a number, and that number has been quoted and re-quoted ever since, with everyone referencing someone else who only got it somewhere else, until it has so many references that it seems real.
I'm serious, I've tried to find it. Now the funny thing is - I'm not alone. Search for "interview" in the comments here:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-turner-bashes-tea-party-calling-them-mean-spirited/ [mediaite.com]
Someone else is asking some other one else the same question I am - and gets no reply.
So, in the language of the IntarWeb: "Pics or it didn't happen".
And yes, the burden of proof lies with you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I am highly sceptical, but I can be convinced. I took a few months to make up my mind about 9/11, for example. I used to doubt that ECHOLON was real, but as more and more evidence has surfaced that I was wrong, I've come around.
But depopulation on a massive scale? And advocated by the very people who have the most to lose from any major socio-political change? That's a crackpot theory and those spreading it are frauds and liars. And I say that in these clear words because I'm not on TV like Pen & Teller and thus I can say what I believe.
Re: (Score:3)
The reference is all over the net. The Audubon Magazine website itself doesn't seem to know about it: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/search/node/ted%20turner [audubonmagazine.org] [audubonmagazine.org]
Wow so you're claiming it's false? Really? You're not actually saying he didn't say it and the interview doesn't exist, are you? Surely you can't be that stupid.
He's saying that unless a quote's verifiable as having been said by Turner, claiming that his views on a subject are X or Y might be a tiny bit intellectually dishonest...
So yes, he's asking you to prove - from an independent source, or by a transcript/video/audio of the original utterance, that he actually said that. If you don't have such evidence, please remember that you're accusing a man of holding views close to genocide of 80% of the world population. I hadn't thought to question this myself, but hec
Re: (Score:3)
Science-informed policy is fine. As long as we can all remember that scientific consensus has often been wrong in the past. The cost-benefit needs to be done with this probability in mind. Really, if you haven't yet read some macro-economics and it will terrify you when you realize what an immature "science" it is. I have been completely convinced that the government should not be in the business of monetary policy, they are making it up as they go along.
Anyway I don't think there is ever true ethics-based
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unlike the pretenders to the throne, I am a real scientist. I can back my claims. I worked in hyperspectral satellite data acquisition at one point in my career and the relative IR impact of water, methane and CO2 is common knowledge. Maybe we should stop the water cycle instead of the carbon cycle (yes, that's a joke).
Water vapor H2O ~54 %
Carbon dioxide CO2 ~9%
Methane CH4 ~7 %
Ozone O3 ~5 %
Further From New Foundations for Classical Mechanics:
**BEGIN QUOTE**
Celestial Mechan
Re:An agenda (Score:4, Informative)
I call bullshit on the parent. The complete failure to mention that water is saturated in the atmosphere, that any excess condenses out as rain, as well as pretending climate scientists ignore water vapour contribution, when every climate model in existence includes it as a positive feedback dependent on temperature, tells me that he either pretends to have higher qualifications in the field than he does, or he knows full and well that he is being deliberately misleading or lying through his teeth. In particular his "joke" absolutely stinks of the usual "lol climate scientists are so stupid" nonsense we hear all the time.
Water is the main greenhouse gas in the earth's atmosphere, but it does not mean that the CHANGE in climate can be explained by water vapour, nor does it imply that carbon dioxide is irrelevant. The amount of water held by the air is largely dependent on temperature. If it gets hotter, more evaporates from the oceans, if it gets colder more will fall out as rain. Carbon dioxide on the other hand tends to stay in the atmosphere for a very long time, and is not absorbed by the oceans, plants or reactions with the earth's minerals at a rate quick enough to compensate for the vast quantities we put into the atmosphere.
Consequentially increasing CO2 concentrations will produce a warmer atmosphere, which in turn increases water concentration, which means the warming from a given amount of CO2 will be greater than you'd expect from CO2 alone.
ANY climate scientist worth his salt (or indeed anybody who even tried to learn about the topic ) would be well aware of this fact, yet the parent appears to either not know about it, or deliberately refraining to point it out in order to make a stupid joke. He's either incompetent or dishonest.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Watch this and ask if you still have a question. Nature of things, David Suzuki, 1 hr. We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal. This is why they keep having to change the numbers on runways periodically.
CERN reproduced the findings which does explain the climate. Then the CERN lab director put a gag order on the results. Look this all up for yourself.
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/poles/ [vrx.net]
Re:An agenda (Score:5, Informative)
We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal.
You're off by a factor of 100. The average time between reversals is 100,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field [wikipedia.org]
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We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal.
This would mean that 200 years ago magnetic north was oriented with the axial south. This would mean that all compasses built more than 200 years ago would point south with the north end of the needle.
Considering this would be significant, and this patently easy to demonstrate, yet is patently false... would you like to try again?
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It's you that doesn't have an argument. You actually are the one creating the strawman.
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"Climate changes because nutation and precession of the Earth and Moon affect the solar incidence angle and distance not to mention the primary factor, ripples in the output of the sun. "
And changes in atmospheric composition. And in fact people have been thinking about the issue for at least 50-60 years. Roger Revelle, a primary oceanographer, wrote as much in an environmental report to the US Government. The Lyndon Johnson Administration. Is this "nobody would worry about this"?
And yes there are correl
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It is, however, more correct than a random Joe's gut feeling on the matter. Not only more correct, but correct more often. Furthermore, argument from authority is NOT a fallacy when there is an actual authority in the subject matter. It is a weak argument, yes, as it is easily countered. It is, however, NOT a fallacy.
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A part of that is being able to accept that you were wrong in questioning scientists when it turns out (as in 99% of cases, probably) that science was right.
Look at the evidence, but when it doesn't support your conclusions, honestly admit that. Launching witch-hunts is truly counter productive!
Re:That's no reason to ignore things. (Score:4, Informative)
Peer review,
It is only as good as it's reviewers. A big part of what Cuccinelli was trying to determine was whether the research was in fact peer-reviewed or cronie-reviewed
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Crap. Why did Cuccinelli decided to undertake a fishing expedition against someone in that particular field, then, one that's known for being highly politically charged?
He has no interest in the truth of the thing; he's interested in intimidating climate scientists into falling into the Republican line, i.e. that AGW is a myth.
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I'm sure CERN will be thrilled to know that they're disqualified from being scientists.
Re:Statistical Games Disqualify You As A Scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
"If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment." - a stupid sentiment, regardless of who said it.
Anyhow, your assertions have been investigated and found to be false.
Re:Statistical Games Disqualify You As A Scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
No sorry. This conservative witch hunt against this work has been clearly shown to be politically biased and non factual. Stop perpetrating the myth.
Re:Statistical Games Disqualify You As A Scientist (Score:5, Informative)
No sorry, this is clearly a witch hunt.
Read here: http://spectator.org/blog/2010/05/17/top-mann-nemesis-hes-not-a-fra [spectator.org]
it was an extremely odd audience reaction: McIntyre received a standing ovation upon his introduction, thanks to his dogged research and unrelenting demand for information and accountability, but then his blase' attitude about scientists' behavior -- particularly Mann's -- left most of the audience cold and some even angry. The applause for McIntyre was tepid upon the conclusion of his remarks.
Clearly the supporters of the audit are not interested in the truth, they are only interested in seeing Mann fail, regardless of the evidence. Get off your high 'this is fraudulent use of tax dollars!' horse and actually look at the evidence and conclusions - not what the crackpot right wing tells you to think.
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Hockey stick confirmed (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no. McIntyre proved that there was a technical flaw in Mann's method of statistical analysis that could occasionally cause an artifactual upturn (or, with equal probability, a downturn) at the end, but despite analyzing a large number of noise data sets, he was not able to find even one case that generated an upturn that approached the magnitude of Mann's "hockey stick" analysis. So, correctly interpreted, McIntyre's results proved that it was highly unlikely that Mann's Hockey Stick curve could result from the artifact. So it is not surprising that numerous subsequent studies, using analyses not subject to this error, and also looking at other types of climate data, have confirmed that the hockey stick is correct. [skepticalscience.com]
So in the end, McIntyre's technical criticism of Mann's approach (which at worst involved a subtlety of statistical analysis that no reasonable scientist would have called a "fraud") turned out to be correct, but irrelevant to Mann's conclusion.
Reproducable data (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know how easy it is to lie with statistics don't you? Oh right scientists can do no wrong in your world view and we should dispense with reproducibility of their claims
You are aware that right now six different independent groups are analyzing the temperature records, using ground, ocean, balloon, and satellite measurements, and getting very consistent results?
You are aware that an independent analysis, "BEST" (by U.C. Berkeley), was set up (and funded by, among other things, many skeptics) with the explicit purpose of doing an independent analysis without the purported "biases" that critical claim other temperature groups had.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/climate-skeptics-perform-independent-analysis-finally-convinced-earth-is-getting-warmer.ars [arstechnica.com]
Here's a quote from leading skeptic Anthony Watts about that BEST study (March 2011):
Guess what-- the results are still the same. The data showing the planet is warming is real.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111020/full/news.2011.607.html [nature.com]
How much "reproducability of their claims" do you want?
Satellite measurements, ground station measurements,ocean measurements, balloon-sonde measurements, microwave measurements-- very different techniques, same answers.
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Guess what? Not the real question and everyone knows it including you.
The real question is two-fold. Is human activity responsible for "runaway warming" (runaway being a question itself) and will the things presented to 'correct' it (oddly by the very people doing the research) be correct themselves or even necessary?
Now, since the Earth warms and cools independently of human presence, you need to *prove*
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Alleging a cause is not the same as proving it is the cause conclusively!
We have a mechanism, lab experiments supporting the mechanism, and real world data matching the predictions generated from the mechanism. That's called science. It's been reproduced by different people, different groups using different methods from all over the world. At this point, yelling correlation is not causation just means you don't know what's going on.
Besides CO2 hasn't caused temperature to deviate in the REAL ACTUAL ATMOSPHERE as noted above thus the CAGW claims of "CO2 driving Temperature" are falsified by Nature.
As opposed to the fake unreal atmosphere everybody has been working with so far? I'm sure you have a link to support that theory? Maybe even a peer-r
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"Ones does NOT need to provide why the temperature is rising as the Null Hypothesis rules in science and the Null Hypothesis in this case is that the warming is Natural and/or unknown."
This is false. The null hypothesis is one kind of statistical methodology used in certain technical circumstances. In practice, an explicit or implicit Bayesian reasoning is usually used.
And a "Natural" cause which somehow excludes humans requires specific physical mechanism, observations and theory which are stronger than
Warming or not? What does the data say? (Score:3)
Correct me if I am wrong but in simple terms the planet warmed a little over 10 years ago and at which time the warming leveled off.
Not much point in replying to posts by anonymous coward, since even if, as you say, "I am willing to listen to evidence that refutes it," how would I know? I don't even know what data you're willing to look at, and what data you have decided to ignore because you claim it is (quoting from the previous post) "...lying with statistics... fabricating temperature readings... committing scientific and financial frauds."
However, taking you at your word for just a moment, here is the data for the Berkeley Earth
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It can easily be seen by your reference to "hiding the decline" that you simply don't understand what youy're talking about. One doesn't "hide" anything by publishing papers about it that get hundreds of citations. A piece of advice: read less denialist propaganda, more actual scientists' work. Michael Mann didn't "hide" his work, reproduced it more than once, and his results have been supported by all other work in this area -- with decentered PCA, without it, using other statistical methods etc. Heck, eve
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For a scientist, you have a remarkable lack of understanding how scientific work is done, what peer review is, what references mean and what statistical analysis is. I'm pretty sure you're lying about your status as a scientist, which means you're probably lying about a whole lot of other things as well.
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The real takeaway is "Don't do research that irritates Republicans, or they might conduct partisan witch-hunts devoid of any actual basis."
Re:Thrown out on a technicality (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The scientists were being attacked because they dared to publish science results that some politicians didn't like. Those politicians were Republicans. You're entitled to your own opinions but not to make up your own facts.
Re:Thrown out on a technicality (Score:4, Funny)
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I suspect the U is fighting the FOIA request because it's a fishing expedition and they know it. Cuccinelli doesn't have any evidence of wrongdoing or he'd have presented it by now and used it as probable cause to continue the investigation, so he's using FOIA in an attempt to grab up everything.
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Looks like I've got to add a step to the list.
The Republican 9^H10 Step Global Warming Denial Plan
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) Litigate against scientists that don't follow the Republican party line.
7) We need to tackle glo
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Bullshit.
Global temperatures are still rising. Anybody saying otherwise has come unmoored from the data.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.E.gif [nasa.gov]
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This, while publicized, was a misprint and has since been retracted. The proper arrangement if digits is "2350". It was a transcription error and if you read the report that cites the source, the source material is the 300-year later date.
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http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/2211222/claims-of-himalayan-glacier-disaster-melt-away [slashdot.org]
And even the revised date has since been found out to be false, as the glaciers that weren't measured are growing and make u
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Want the raw data? Here! [realclimate.org] The first segment, as you can see, is called "Climate data - Raw". Want the code? Here! [clearclimatecode.org] They're cleaning up the scientist-written code to see if it performs the same as the published results.
There's plenty of scrutiny, that dosen't involve harassment or intimidation of scientists and shifting goalposts.
With that in mind, why spend literally trillions of dollars trying to prevent the climate from changing, when it's going to change anyway? Maybe not in the exact same way as it would sans humanity, but it's going to change. Better to use the resources and effort to address that, than using it tilting at the useless windmill of trying to make the Earth's climate static.
If you're going to die of cancer anyway, why spend literally tens of thousands of dollars in treatment to prevent it from metastasizing when it may happen anyway? What a question!
Here
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"Some AGW skeptics do prefer other specific hypotheses which are not the Null Hypothesis (e.g., the Sun is the principal driver to terrestrial temperature,) and those hypotheses do require proof. But most skeptics make no such claims."
Yes, conveniently they ignore any responsibility to explain observations with actual physics.
Repeat: climatology is not statistics, it is physics.
The null hypothesis that works much much much much better: explanations based on justified physics backed by observations, are ENOR
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"Worse, one of the ways that the models have been "curve fitted" is by assuming that any deviation between the models and the historical climate is due to the unproven "drastic synergistic warming" that magically transforms slight warming of no consequence into significant warming that might be harmful (or might be net beneficial.)
In other words, climate models that operate solely according to first principles do not show any warming trend that would be worth mitigating, neither in the past nor in the futur
Re: Religionists (Score:3)
That's funny because the greatest deniers of AGW are white evangelicals: http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Religious-Groups-Views-on-Global-Warming.aspx [pewforum.org]
What part of religion is it that some atmospheric gases absorb infrared? Ever notice how on cloudy nights the temperature falls less than on clear nights? That's the greenhouse effect in action. More greenhouse gas (water) means less heat escapes to space, thus it stays warmer. Water is the main greenhouse gas, mainly because there is a lot m