Climate Change Skeptic Group Must Pay Damages To UVA, Michael Mann 497
ideonexus (1257332) writes In January of 2014, the American Traditions Institute (ATI) sought climate scientist Micheal Mann's emails from his time at the University of Virginia, a request that was denied in the courts. Now the Virginia Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that ATI must pay damages for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully.
Just an observation . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
But it seems that the only way to get emails and not get sued is to, How shall we say, Hack in.
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Although that can get you prison time.
Re:Just an observation . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Not if you're the Russian intelligence services, the prime suspect behind the hack. Anyone want to bet that this was part of the same initiative that brought us the more recent scandals of Russian state funding for European anti-fracking groups and American lobbying against LNG export approval?
Whatever it takes to keep your main market open, dependent, and buying your main exports in vast quantities, I suppose.
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You don't think like a lawyer. The way to get emails is discovery.
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Would you rather have all of your email history made freely available to anyone who asks for it? I wouldn't.
Just another observation (Score:5, Insightful)
You need people's emails when you're digging for something (anything really) you can use to discredit someone personally (apart from any scientific merit). Besides which, some of those emails are personal.
The Virginia court ruled that filing a lawsuit just to get those emails constitutes harassment, which in turn is a frivolous use of the court's time. A sensible conclusion in my opinion.
And yes, there do seem to be consequences for filing frivolous lawsuits.
That is not how conspiracy theories work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Evidence against them only makes them stronger.
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Evidence against them? What evidence against them?
(Conspiracy groups either ignore evidence against them or claim it is part of the conspiracy.)
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This is not a conspiracy theory group ... this is a corporate funded anti-issue group so yes this should work against them.
Their funding is irrelevant. People will believe it anyway. Look at how slashdot reacts to any story with the word "Nuclear" in it... it's irrelevant it the entire story is an alarmist ad/click trap, people want to believe it so bad they throw common sense out the window.
The guy should have just opened up his email voluntarily. He could then remove anything personal, which I'm guessing is his primary concern.
Re:That is not how conspiracy theories work. (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know why ATI wanted access to Mann's emails: So that they could cherry-pick some juicy out of context quote to smear Mann with.
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Say, but on the topic of scientific malpractice: Did you hear what happened to the climate change "skeptic" journal Pattern Recognition in Physics?
The nepotism and scientific malpractice became so rampant that the publisher actu
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"If what occurred at CRU is within normal bounds of science then science is in a sad state of affairs."
I've heard reports that the number of scientific papers being retracted is rising in all fields of study, so I have to ask:
How do you know that what occurred at the CRU is not "within normal bounds of science"? You can't actually know that unless we can read the work related emails of all scientists in all fields of study to objectively compare them... and that's where a sincere argument for greater scientific transparency begins:
A sincere argument for greater scientific transparency starts with new rule
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The guy should have just opened up his email voluntarily. He could then remove anything personal, which I'm guessing is his primary concern.
If he had removed anything they'd just claim that the removed emails contain the evidence that they were looking for, and more people would be inclined to believe them because they now have evidence that he's hiding something. Frankly, I suspect even if he opened up his email voluntarily and didn't remove anything personal they'd claim that obviously he'd already hidden the evidence they were looking for. Witch hunts don't end just because you're co-operating with your would-be executioners.
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N'o. I' do'ubt they' 'do.'
$250 (Score:2)
Less than a flea bite.
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'Tis but a scratch!
It's just a flesh wound!
Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that the Climate Skeptics are making the same mistake the anti-eugenics movement made in 1925 with the Scopes Monkey Trial [wikipedia.org], which fought the teaching of evolution in schools. Most people don't know this, but the anti-evolution activists were horrified by the textbook's use of Evolution to justify Eugenics [ideonexus.com], but instead of attacking the public policy proposals of the Eugenics Movement, they attacked the science of Evolution, and history remembers them as buffoons for combating the scientific consensus.
Today, Climate Skeptics are fighting the scientific consensus instead of debating the policies being proposed from that consensus. I myself am an adaptationist, I don't care if we do anything about Global Warming for another 20-30 years and at that point I have faith that civilization will start to engineer its way out of the problem... however, I find myself on the side of the environmentalists with their oftentimes draconian public-policy initiatives because I believe in scientific literacy, and the anti-science positions of today's Climate Skeptics threaten to undo the scientific progress on which our civilization depends for its survival.
Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score:5, Insightful)
...I don't care if we do anything about Global Warming for another 20-30 years and at that point I have faith that civilization will start to engineer its way out of the problem...
"We'll invent something to fix this when the time comes" is not a sound policy, or a policy at all. It's wishful thinking. What if we don't?
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Why not both work to prevent (or if we can't prevent, at least reduce) Climate Change as well as work to adapt to it? Cover both our bases. I can understand if you take issue with specific means of preventing Climate Change because you think method X is better than method Y, but saying we won't take any preventative measures at all and instead just deal with it when it comes is short-sighted. If you own a home, should you allow the foundation to crumble, refuse to patch it, and just decide to deal with i
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I think that's what most people are trying to do.
But the climate deniers are very squeaky wheels. Just like most things, their bullshit gets trumpeted as fact by some, thus holding up the discussions.
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We will. That has happened repeatedly in the past. It is no more logical for us to worry about humanity in 100 years than it would have been for people in 1900 to worry about us today.
Think of how much has been invented -- yet they would have been concerned about horse poop buildup and poop dust all over everything. 'Let's limit use of horses!" slowing the economy and leaving us with, say, 1980 level tech, "helping" absolutely no one.
So, to people 100 years from now. What did we do? Keep a powerful eco
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It's a very valid argument. You have two choices: action and inaction. You weigh the costs of both and make a choice based on which position will leave you better off!
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Its not a binary answer as you suggest. Action can happen while even operating on inaction and there are litterally endless possabilities on action.
So is not caring and dealing with problems as they happen an action or inaction?
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I'm sorry, but your assessment of their position is wrong.
They hate liberals, and feel that liberals lie to them. So they are assuming they are lieing in regards to climate change.
Unfortunately They're right, the left is so wound up about the topic they are spewing lies and misinformation regularly.
Al Gore made that awful movie. It was probably the single biggest determent to the issue of climate change that's ever happened. It hyper polarized the issue, put the biggest leftest in the country at the head of
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Could you give some examples of misinformation that is regularly spewed?
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Counted the number of hurricanes lately?
How about tornadoes?
Is New York Underwater yet?
Britain will never see snow again.
Etc.
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Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score:5, Interesting)
Just off the first page of a Google search.
Hurricanes will increase in number and intensity. [nature.org]
Tornadoes will increase in number and intensity. [nationalgeographic.com]
New York will be under water. [huffingtonpost.com]
Britain will never see snow again.
Record low Hurricanes, Tornadoes, New York still hasn't flooded, and Britain just had record snowfall this last winter.
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Those are predictions about the future, as noted by the future tense form "will X". Think about what you would need to do so show those statements are misinformation. You don't have a crystal ball, do you? Even if you do are could conclusively show the predictions are inaccurate, that still doesn't demonstrate willful dissent of misinformation, just someone making an incorrect prediction.
Again, could you give some misinformation that is regularly spewed by the left about climate change?
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No, I'm not being thick. I was expecting actual misinformation such as "volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels", "Antarctic ice is not melting", "the planet's temperature is not increasing", "the warming is due to increased solar output" and so on. If you ask me, the misinformation is coming from the other side, you know, the one that doesn't have actual evidence on their side so they need to fabricate it.
As for your "short period of time" claim, I did not see a date in the first article yo
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So by "the left" you meant "tabloid newspapers"?
Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score:4, Insightful)
The Creationists are wrong about that because:
(1) Hitchens (like Gore) is not a scientist. You can not draw any conclusions about the validity of a scientific theory on the basis of the statements of non-scientists.
(2) It doesn't matter how Hitchens said what he said. We are all responsible for deciding what we believe. Responsible people ignore the polarization and examine the arguments logically. Idiots blame their dismissal of science on "the other guy" for not being nice.
If I wouldn't accept the "that guy polarized the debate" argument from Creationists; why would I accept it from you?
Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score:4, Insightful)
Ain't going to happen, sadly. As the temperate zone moves closer to the world's poles, and the regions we're currently growing cereal crops on become progressively more arid, there is simply less area of land (square miles or kilometres or however you want to measure it) on which crops can be grown - and that's ignoring the costs of clearing and draining that land, and all the effects of ecocide.
At the same time as this is happening, of course, all our critical infrastructure will become unusable unless we make huge new investments in flood walls. For example, I work for a major international bank, which, obviously, has its critical data infrastructure replicated in seven cities across the globe. Only one problem: in six of those seven cities, our data centres are within ten metres of current sea level. Most major financial centres are old port cities, and all old port cities are on the coast. So over the next fifty years we have to either all relocate our trading infrastructure, or else abandon it. What I expect will happen is that we'll delay and dawdle until it's too late, and then our whole civilisation will collapse under the combined pressures of hunger, refugees, and rising water levels.
We're already past the point where there's any hope of the planet being able to support even half its current population in 100 years time. The real policy question is how we now radically reduce the population without war, pestilence, famine and death.
Citation needed please (Score:4, Interesting)
All the history of the Butler act I ever read mention they simply feared teaching of evolution would weaken faith, and that they refused our descendance from great apes, as it would shows us as descending from lower beings like animals. At no point the proponent of Butler's act mentioned eugenism, that sound like a modern rewriting of the history. In fact the prominent web sites which promote this thesis are : answeringenesis and creation.com. Fancy that.
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Just because everyone thinks it is right doesn't mean that its correct.
Scientific consensus once said that the world was flat, that the sun orbited the earth. It was once the consensus that an atom was like a plum pudding (JJ Thompsons model).
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Scientific consensus was never that the world was flat. They laughed at Columbus because he was counting on the planet being smaller than any educated person knew it was.
For the rest, you're talking about theories about observations, not the observations. Global warming has been observed in many ways. I don't think the vast majority of scientists have ever been that wrong about observed fact, although obviously they've often been at least somewhat wrong on the theory.
If UVA and Mann have nothing to hide (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just release the emails and shut this group up? It seems like they are going to great lengths to hide something.
Re:If UVA and Mann have nothing to hide (Score:4, Funny)
Like you then, Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms Anonymous coward?
What have you got to hide then?
do you like to wear women's clothing and chop down trees? (Monty Python link deliberate)
From the
Can we see those incriminating emails that might be about something totally irrelevant but we need to see them anyway...
Department.
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ed
Re:If UVA and Mann have nothing to hide (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond the "you shouldn't be forced to reveal private matters or be assumed guilty?" Then how about because nothing shuts up groups like this. Say he releases his e-mails and there is nothing incriminating in there. They will find one passage which, if taken out of context, will "prove" their point. Then they'll tout this out-of-content statement all over the place. Sure, some people will see the truth, but many more will believe the lie instead.
To put it another way, I suspect you of committing illegal acts. Send me all of your e-mail correspondence for the last 10 years. I'll pour through that and see if anything looks wrong. If you typed "I hope we don't get caught" in the context of throwing someone a surprise birthday party and sneaking the gifts past them, I'll take that line and use it to show how you're really a shady criminal conspiring to avoid capture for your crimes. I await you sending me all of your e-mails so I can use them against you in any way I see fit.
Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael Mann is not my favorite scientist, as he has a pattern of cargo cultist behavior that has annoyed his peers (provoking words like "vomit" and "crock of s**t"). The lawsuit to watch is the one where Mann is suing the National Review (a conservative magazine) and Mark Steyn, a conservative satirist and commentator. Whether or not his overall beliefs about AGW are justified, Professor Mann does have skeletons in his closet, and if the court does its job properly, he will be smacked down hard.
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Interesting)
The FOI doesn't allow you to sue someone for access to their records soley on the pretext that you're going to trawl for unspecified and potentially nonexistent wrongdoing.
I don't think you know what a cargo cult (or by extension, "cargo cult science") is.
It's not the court's purpose to air dirty laundry of people you don't like soley because there is dirty laundry to be aired.
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael Mann is not my favorite scientist, as he has a pattern of ...
Do you seriously have favorite scientists? Quick: Who's your favorite and least favorite molecular biologists? How about Phytopathologists? Do they have groupies and haters too?
Reciprocal discovery will make the emails public (Score:2, Informative)
In Mann vs Steyn the NR will be able to troll through all of Mann's emails and data.
Mann is in favor of his proceeding with discovery against Steyn - "The fact that Mr. Steyn has not appealed the denial of the motions to dismiss counsels further against a discovery stay. Mr. Steyn, like Dr. Mann, has made clear his desire to have this Court resolve this lawsuit and to move forward with discovery immediately. As such, there is no reason for this Court to delay discovery further."
On the other hand, Mann is to
Re:Reciprocal discovery will make the emails publi (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what grounds there are for reciprocal discovery in this instance. A libel suit has never been an opportunity for the defendant to play detective and attempt to prove their accusations.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Funny)
"Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies." -- Scott Westerfeld
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Funny)
"Why this isn't climate change at all! It's *removes mask from monster* Michael Mann and 97% of the world's scientists!"
"We would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling billionaires!"
(Oops. Should have added a spoiler alert.)
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:4, Insightful)
and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well
And many of them are finding out the hard way that challenging religious dogma often gets you burned at the stake.
Posting AC because even mild skepticism of AGW will get you burned as a heretic on /. too.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a heretic. Burned as someone willfully ignoring the science to cling to their beliefs. This is slashdot, after all, and the way AGW skeptics present arguments often stinks of conspiracy theories.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:4, Insightful)
You have mixed something up. There are huge grants for disproving or challenging anything related to AGW funded by the powers that oppose (everybody with money). Pro-AGW science only receive money from everybody without money, which while a lot, doesn't really add up to anything.
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What on earth are you talking about? If you could cast credible doubt on AGW you'd not only have industry throwing money at you, but once you'd overturned the current consensus in climate science you'd have every major university fighting to get hold of the person who revolutionised the field.
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AEI, for one [theguardian.com]. $10k for any paper that attacks the IPCC reports. There's other public offers out there, too. And I'm sure they're outnumbered 100 times over by not-so-public ones.
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Go right ahead and point me to where a decline in Antarctic ice was a forecast of AGW.
You do know that - below freezing - there's an inverse correlation between temperature and snowfall, don't you? And I really hope you know that it's very rare that temperatures rise above freezing in the vast majority of Antarctica, whether you add a couple degrees to the temperature or not, right? Or did you not know / ever consider that?
Just because you didn't realize something that should have been really bloody obvious to you doesn't mean it was a scientific prediction by your straw-man scientists.
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He said ice sheet. So we're supposed to ignore what he actually said and assume he meant something completely different? Um, no.
"I am not well read in this department" - wait a minute, you can give exact cites for research papers on sea ice, but don't even have a *general* conception of what percentage of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining versus what is losing? Something tells me you're just grabbing cites you've never even read from denier websites.
Let me help you out with ice sheet. [www.ipcc.ch] Pretty much all of th
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Informative)
The 97% number is not nonsense, as you claim, it comes from this widely cited peer-reviewed study. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
After reviewing over 11,000 scientific papers on climate change, of the papers that took a position on climate change (either for or against), 97% concluded it was indeed happening and induced by man.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Informative)
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"97% of scientists who actually work in this area" seems like the statistic you want to worry about, doesn't it?
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97% of Catholic Priests believe in God. News at 11.
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"Science is not supposed to be driven by consensus."
It isn't and nobody ever said it was. You're arguing against position that nobody believes.
Scientific consensus is only important as a signal to the general public. When a scientific consensus forms around a new theory it signals that the evidence for a theory is so strong that it has convinced a large majority of scientists in a field of study that the theory is accurate. It tells us "you can take the theory seriously now".
You say:
"You are supposed to design a theory that makes worthwhile predictions about some aspect of the real world and then test it in the real world to ensure it actually predicts stuff."
I'm not a Climatologist but I'm pretty sure that is exactly w
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That 97% number IS bull, and its right there in the link you provided, under abstract:
We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
So of the abstracts which discuss global warming, 97% support AGW. Except, you would not call that an unbiased sample, nor would that be an acc
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My complaint is that the 97% draws an invalid link between abstracts written and opinion. 99.999% of scientists have an opinion on AGW; that doesnt mean they have written a paper on that. The way you determine that is to do a random sample poll, not to use a selection-biased sample and draw faulty conclusions on it.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually read the paper and the rebuttal in the blog you posted? The scientific paper specifically says says they removed the papers that did not take a position on AGW. Then the blog post comes along and says OMG! They threw out some papers and sensationalizes the very thing the scientific paper was up front about. How can the research paper count something in the for or against column (the very point of it's study) if no position is taken? It's a stupid sensationalist strawman.
Scientific Paper: We removed from our study the papers that took no position for or against AGW. Here are the results of the papers with a position. This paper is not about how severe the conditions are, just tabulating the percentage of papers that conclude climate change is man made, and those that are not. That is the purpose of this research. Here is our data, linked to for your review. You can even download the PDF's and spreadsheets and review it in the linked data section.
Your lame blog rebuttal: A sensationalized OMG! The scientific paper EXCLUDED papers that didn't take a position. How can their data possibly be credible now???? And even worse, they won't even say if its dangerous or not!!! This paper is a crock! Your lame blog then cites a letter from a scientist who asked for the data (even though it is all linked to and available on the IOP website) and the stufy authors didn't get back to them. The blog then cites this as daming proof that the study must be a joke. Because no one hand fed this guy data he could have downloaded off the site.
You see why people can't take you seriously? Get yourself some peer reviewed data and we'll talk.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't really mean to yell at you. I was characterizing the fervor of the blog you linked.
If you feel it was sloppy, that 's the great thing about peer reviewed science. You are welcome to re-do it yourself. This was a simple study, with an easy to understand methodology, so I'm not sure what you find "sloppy". Please do elaborate.
Repeat the experiment yourself.....
Step 1) Researchers made a list of scientific papers from peer reviewed journals that search keywords found to match something about climate change. 11,000-12,000 of them. Here is the raw data (the one that your linked blog said the Norwegian scientist just couldn't somehow get his hands on, no matter how hard he tried or emailed, that your blog implied was a coverup). http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/media/erl460291datafile.txt
Step 2) Review and determine if the paper takes a stand on global warming. Exclude the papers that do not. (Since the whole point of this experiment is to determine that percentage of papers for or against AGW)
Step 3) Determine the percentages of the remaining papers. Are they for or against? Publish result.
All this other stuff you and the blog bring up... is it dangerous? how much is man made? etc, etc is outside the scope of the study. The point of *this* one particular study is to find out what percentage of published, peer reviewed papers, attribute AGW to man made causes. Coming up with the "consensus" of scientists. If you have other questions, look to other research, but don't knock this paper or setup straw man arguments based on something it's not. That's just shady.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record. Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.), and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
[Citation Needed]
This is the original press release [uic.edu] about the 97%. By the way, the correct citation is "In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. "
Basically the survey found that the experts in the field have 97% consensus. For overall numbers of scientists:
Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.
About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.
Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future".
No I think computer models are really the only thing we have as we don't have a spare planet to experiment upon and god-like powers. But with all models, I don't assume that they are all 100% accurate. But I think they can be constructed to be close enough to determine a reasonable outcome.
Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle. Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes, so throwing a supercomputer at an impossible problem doesn't magically add credibility. *sigh*
No one has ever said that these models are 100% for all future predictions. Like most of science, theories (and models) that best fit observable data are used. And like most of science these are tested. I don't know if this is some sort of delusion or lack of understanding of how science works. Just because a scientist proposes something or releases a paper, it is not automatically accepted without challenge. Data is challenged. Conclusions are challenged.
All science is challenged. Consensus is reached after enough data and evidence is presented that favors the conclusions. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity wasn't accepted because Einstein proposed it. It took a solar eclipse before many physicists began to accept that it might be the best theory. Now by today's standards, the results of solar eclipse experiment would not have been enough.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoever asked for 100%? The errors on the models are so far rather huge.
As for testing, yes, science is tested and challenged. But here's the rub: that process takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. Like 50 years.
Both the scenarios and the time to correct are running into the decades, which is much longer than the window inside which we're supposed to act to avert catastrophe. In other words, both the prediction and the correction haven't come about yet, so anything we do now is based on faith and best guesses.
You can't magic away the risk with a supercomputer and lots of clever people.
Ideally science would be an ever gradual fine grained improvement, but as soon as you deal with complex systems, like human bodies, or diet, or climate, there is just no magic answer. Like you say, we don't have ten planets to run as experiments. As you say, it is not the scientific method as famous for testing things to death repeatedly that is being used. It is guesswork. Educated guesswork carries risks and unintended consequences.
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Basically the survey found that the experts in the field have 97% consensus
Problem is that skeptical scientists such as Richard Lindzen [wsj.com] agree with that 'consensus', because the question is too narrow. Ask something more interesting like, "should we replace all our coal power with renewables because to prevent AGW?" or "is AGW going to be catastrophic?" and you will find that there is no consensus.
But I think they can be constructed to be close enough to determine a reasonable outcome.
You didn't clarify what you mean by 'reasonable outcome,' but this paper in Nature [ed.ac.uk] demonstrates that the climate models have serious errors.
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I think it was Sam Harris who said that something strange happens when an issue becomes a moral issue. Reason and questioning are no longer allowed. Another weird thing is that people are easily affected to become irrational, when it is being done by the oil lobby, but environmentalists are immune to anything which might corrupt their judgement in a groupthink way. Enviros deconstruct other's hidden motives and agendas, but they themselves are immune. Weird no? To just happen to be in the right? (Real post-
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OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record. Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.), and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
I think you are right, we should let biologists design nuclear reactors as they obviously have an opinion about them. Just as we should employ eugenics as a number of Aryan physicists think we should!
I'm a little bit surprised that Slashdot doesn't have more AGW catastrophism skeptics, to be honest. Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future". Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle. Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes, so throwing a supercomputer at an impossible problem doesn't magically add credibility. *sigh* (goes back to reading Professor Judith Curry's blog)
What? The fact we understand that we can't understand everything of every topic and that experts are likely to know their area better than us... isn't that a good thing? And your understanding of the area seems very suspect - it isn't only about "supercomputer driven model". Far from it.
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You would be correct, throwing statistical data and a computer driven model simulations at me only raises an eyebrow. I have neither the time or desire to dive into it to verify the interpretation for myself, and it is of little consequence. Cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, renewable energy should be a goal regardless of global warming, and sooner is better than later.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Interesting)
Define 'scepticism about AGW catastrophism'. I'm a professional physicist and I would suggest, based on experience talking to my colleagues, that there is very little scepticism amongst physicists that humans are responsible for observed temperature rises and are going to be responsible for a whole lot more. It is certainly not 'rampant'. Consequences of said warming for the human race is a different topic.
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The 97% is based on scientific polling of actual climate scientists. It is fair to say that about 19 out of 20 people actually doing research and publishing papers in the field of climatology have concluded that the buildup of greenhouse gas caused by human activity is becoming the driving force behind global warming.
On the other hand, your claim is based on anecdotes about "physicists" and "biologists" who very well may not even do active research in climatology being "skeptical". But the fact is, denial
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Actually, I think it was 97% of the reports that someone wanted to categorize however they wished to.
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He didn't say Nye is not a scientist, but that climatology is not Nye's field (it is mechanical engineering, actually).
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"See, I told you the Kenyan, Muslim, socialist, green, anti-American is trying to bankrupt the righteous, god fearing, flag waving, truck driving, ordinary American trying to protect his traditional way of life. Don't believe those liberal, elitist, heathen scientists. Donate here and vote this way. Thank you. "
This post should be read with the sarc filter on.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really. You can see the actual spin in this very thread. They are starting to form a basic premise of "freedom of speech" being killed by these pesky "libel" laws(and judges who are now also in on the conspiracy).
The oil companies/heartland institute don't have to create spin anymore, because they've had the most important success possible: making denialism an important part of the identity of a lot of people.
There is not a soul who was babbling about this "scandal" when it "broke" who will take this ruling as cause for reconsideration. And that's the big success.
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In other words, the spin has become self-sustaining. It would be ironic if we could harass this self-sustaining spin to generate enough energy to stop using fossil fuels and reverse climate change.
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A fun thing about reversing climate change, pointed out by a climatologist in an article I recently read.
If we cut new human emissions to zero, and found a way to stop the methane emissions from thawing permafrost and other positive feedback loops, historical evidence indicates that it might take a century or so for the planet's natural CO2 regulation methods to actually return to postindustrial levels.
I mean, that'd be fine, because our situation today isn't broadly disastrous like another 4-5 degrees C wo
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The numbers I've usually heard have been about an order of magnitude higher. There's not many ways that CO2 gets sequestered. Plants, most of which rot and re-release their CO2 with some getting buried in swamps and such. We've also drained a lot of swamp land slowing down this method. And through rainfall, which increases as temps go up, causing erosion and eventually sequestering the CO2 as calcium carbonate. Also slow.
Perhaps there are others I'm not aware of.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:4, Informative)
Plants are not the primary living consumers of CO2 on this planet. That'd be ocean-borne algae.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Interesting)
The oil companies/heartland institute don't have to create spin anymore, because they've had the most important success possible: making denialism an important part of the identity of a lot of people.
In some ways, it's very cult-like in the way that it forms identity. Denialism gives you victim/threatened status (those evildoers are attacking our beliefs, we need to be warriors), enough victories to think of oneself as a winner but maintain the communal aspects of thinking oneself under threat, charismatic leaders, the companionship of shared beliefs, a sense of superiority to those who disbelieve, and, in the most cult-like aspect, the assurance of being above mere facts, of living in a world where your personal beliefs trump mere objective facts.
Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget a sense of purpose. You are fighting this extremely large group of powerful individuals who are conspiring to make the public believe a lie. (Be it AGW, the moon landing, vaccinations preventing disease, alternative medicine, Obama not being a secret Muslim lizard robot intent on world domination, etc.) Only you and your small band know the truth and must fight against overwhelming odds to battle the lie. I'm sure many conspiracy theorists feel like they are living in a movie and cast themselves as the dashing hero determined to save the day.
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You know things like "ostracize those who speak to outsiders", "venerate central personality who makes all decisions", or "target and harass ex-members".
In the political sphere, at least, I'd say that does happen. Political compromise gets a lot of scorn poured on it, there are certain political figures/organizations who get venerated and call most of the shots, and while there's very little side-switching in national and state politics, so not quite the equivalence to becoming an ex-member, those who do stray from doctrine get targeted, most definitely.
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Actually, the spin is more likely to be something about if you got nothing tp hide, why did you refuse to release yhe communication and something about the courts sending a message to people who ask questions that this subject is off limits or you will pay.
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Let me know what the CO2 levels are during the species Homo span.
What's that? A record high?
Yeah, everyone knows the earth will go on spinning. It's us we're worrying about, you fucking moron.
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The stairwell in Venice is submerged because Venice itself is sinking, not because sea levels rose several feet since it was built.
Re:It *isn't* that well understood (Score:4, Informative)
"Current CO2 concentration is 380 ppm or so."
You're a bit out of date(2010), I see. Atmospheric CO2 has been crossing the 400ppm [noaa.gov] mark lately, (avr 399 ppm)
Over the last year(june2013-june2014) it climbed by 2.56ppm, and that rate of increase appears to be accelerating, thus humanity is going to be in deep doo-doo real soon if we don't stop burning fossil fuels.
The other facts you seam to be missing, Our star(SOL) was somewhat dimmer in the past, thus requiring much higher CO2 levels to keep the earth from freezing over. And that humanity is totally dependent on the current climate patterns..
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Correction 380ppm was crossed in 2005-2006 [noaa.gov] time frame.
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Yes the CO2 levels increased. Yet the global average temperature did not rise as predicted by the AGW model.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la... [forbes.com]
http://www.nature.com/news/cli... [nature.com]
Re: (Score:3)
A couple of points. What was the pressure of the atmosphere at sea level during those times? We know the Sun put out less energy in the past so the Earth previously needed more greenhouse gases to be inhabitable. Eventually (perhaps a billion years) the Earth will get too hot even with zero CO2.
The other point is that for 80% of the Earths history it has been in hot house conditions with tropical temps even at the poles. Ice house conditions (defined as having polar ice caps) have been rare. Thing is we and
Inconvenient (Score:3)
Your post paints an overly simplistic view.
No, it does not. It is not a view, it is fact. When the Earth's atmosphere has a higher partial pressure of CO2 it retains more heat. That is the essential point under consideration, and the exact value of the partial pressure is irrelevant and was not mentioned. We're not talking about the political issues, or the history of the planet, only cold hard measurable facts about [a] the relationship between irradiance and re-radiation, and [b] the absorption spectrum of CO2.
However, on the separate subject you
Re: (Score:3)
so...why have temperaturse not risen during last 15-17 years while C)2 went up?
Holy shit that canard has been busted more times than I can count.
Of course, moderated into oblivion by deniers. No surprise there. Do you guys really fail to understand the cherry-picking of the data point 15-17 years ago and the false "trend" from that point?
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Its not yhe data that thry claim is wrong with the lack of warming claim.
What they say busts the claim is that the oceans all the sudden are more of a sink then in years past. Actually, they do not claim anything is magically different other than the understanding of ow much of a sink the oceans are. Of course i find that problematic because the temps 30 years ago would have had the same intrraction. But evidently in the slow warming periods, it is important to make that claim as it clearly busts other clai