Climategate: The Skeptical Scientist’s View
As readers are now aware, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the main climate research center in Britain, has had 128 megabytes of secret emails and other data placed online by someone calling himself “FOIA.” A number of scientists have been trying for years to get the raw data possessed by CRU placed online, filing requests under the British Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Although required by law to release this information, CRU has not done so, or has claimed that the data were accidentally erased. We now have proof in the emails that the illegal withholding of information was intentional, and that the erasure of data was also intentional.
The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime — the real story of Climategate.
It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.
The chemist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote an entire novel, A Whiff of Death, which revolved around the seriousness of falsifying data to make it fit one’s own theory. In the novel, the fraudster was murdered by a senior scientist who felt very strongly about scientific treason. My own view is that execution is a bit harsh, and that the standard penalty of being dismissed from one’s job is quite sufficient. But Asimov’s novel gives an excellent description of the enormous temptation scientists face to falsify data when the pesky experiments are refuting one’s pet theory — and it is clear from the released emails that most of the world’s leading climate scientists have yielded to temptation and have tried to force their data into agreement with the theory of global warming. They should be fired.
Alas, I doubt if any of them will lose their current employment or be disciplined in any way. Too many powerful interests are now committed to the truth of global warming theory. These traitors to science are bringing in huge grants to their universities, and the salaries of the bureaucrats who run these universities are dependent on this government grant money.
I’ve doubted the reliability of the global warming data for some time now, so I personally am not surprised by the contents of the emails. What the released data provide is additional proof that the temperature data can’t be trusted and that climate scientists are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy. And like all conspiracies, it was finally exposed. In this case, it was most likely exposed by an honest man inside CRU who believed that the FOIA law should be obeyed.
Two factors have enabled this particular conspiracy to survive for so long.
First, the actual data for surface temperatures have been available only through a small number of organizations. Every experienced scientist has had occasion to doubt a colleague’s reported experimental result. No problem: The skeptical scientist merely has to try to replicate his colleague’s result, and a failure means that the claim is false. But how does one replicate the claim that the average temperature of the Earth — an average computed from taking the data at thousands of temperature stations all across the globe — was one degree Fahrenheit lower in 1900 that it was in 2000? It is impossible to visit all the stations today, to say nothing of the stations of 1900. Replication is impossible.
Nicely summarized, Professor.
The AGW scandal is even deeper than the CRU documents make it out to be. The whole notion of a “global temperature” is nonsense on stilts. Measurement of a fictional metric is an exercise in fantasy; measurement to the precision the AGW flacksters need to support their thesis compounds fantasy with megalomania.
There are several sorts of evidence by which anyone could judge whether the Earth is becoming more or less benign toward life. World populations, both human and non-human, are a good starting point. Average human and mammalian longevity are worth considering as well. But data that can be reasonably interpreted by an ordinary private citizen with no axe to grind are of no interest to persons who seek huge government grants and power over the lives of others.
Frank,
And even if the observation network was robust and readily available, it’s not so easy to reproduce the climate models themselves.
As you know, they’re huge, expensive creations, built by teams of people over long periods of time from all over the world. They have many independent components that “hook” into each other, where each of these components deal with different physics. The computer code is often delegated, and it is unaudited.
No one person can understand the whole of any model.
In the end, the models are making predictions about small percent changes in the variance of temperature (and other variables), signals supposed to be so small that they can barely be distinguished from the noise. It is a miracle that people have become as confident as they are.
Unless, that is, your idea that scientists come equipped with a pre-decided belief in the theory of man-made warming is correct. If somebody is a true believer, then no especial evidence is required, and it’s easy to focus only on those tidbits that confirm that belief.
Thanks for emphasizing this point, because I have always felt that this is where the real story is.
It belong to the people to educate themselves and learn how to question what the experts say.
Franckly, it’s like the ozone layer thingy. According to the same scientists, we should all be dead by now … oh dear !
how does one replicate the claim that the average temperature of the Earth — an average computed from taking the data at thousands of temperature stations all across the globe — was one degree Fahrenheit lower in 1900 that it was in 2000? It is impossible to visit all the stations today, to say nothing of the stations of 1900.
If one can’t replicate this claim for the reasons you stated, how does one even originate it? I’m asking because I don’t understand how Phil Jones et. al. got this corrupt data they wouldn’t share (not a scientist here by a long shot). I thought some significant portion of it came from proxies such as tree rings and glaciers.
More especifically, if data/methods and conclusions are to used to make public policy, then they have to be made public to anyone, and replicable by anyone.
What amazed me is the sloppiness of thier work. They did not keep thier own databases in good working order. The Dog REALLY did eat the homework and because of that hundreds of papers written by other Respectable Scientists who relied on the work from GRU to be Accurate and Dependable will either have to be redone or thrown out. They could not reconstruct thier own Data Sets, simply amazing. Is this how you guys keep records?
Excellent article (though you could mention Popper).
let us take the ozone layer in the context of this lovely article: 1) it isn’t a complex model based on restricted data, it’s a bit f’ing hole in the sky that everyone who looked saw. 2) it changed over a known time and this was observed 3) my textbooks in medical school said melanoma was a disease of the elderly, the derm clinic said it was a disease of early middle age !
Everything fit; we acted (the ability to get rid of some of the worst chemicals was economically easy) and the ozone hole stopped growing (slate magazine source).
So… the only question I have for the article’s author (I’ll look it up) is in the first paragraph’s use of the term ‘most’. Arctic ice core data ? American researchers ? There’s a LOT of global warming consequences, many of which I can see out of my window (temp near 60 and total fog in Late November in Maryland… shifts in the gardening advice catalogs, vines on the trees that look like Ol Missisip).
So, I think CRU is more of a catastrophe for rationality than for general climate data. Applause to the article’s author for stating the philosophical underpinnings of science well.
Like the old poster of a nuclear explosion with the logo:
Theory by Europeans
Built by lazy overpaid Americans
Tested in Japan
Prof. Tipler makes good points about the foundation of this climate mess.
As a young relativist, what concerned me last night was when I waded through the HARRY_READ_ME.txt and man does it look bad. Computations are difficult enough when the data are organized, but from Harry’s log, it appears to have been a veritable MOAMN, mother of all mare’s nests.
And it is carrying a huge load that now appears ready to crumble into rubble piles all over academia.
Having created a few of my own mare’s nests in BASIC, IDL, C, Mathematica and on zero-th order scratch paper, I looked though the HARRY_READ_ME.txt with great pity for Harry. God rest ye, Harry!
Since so much of the “work” out there is based upon this fraudulent data, as well as so much of the education system for this “science”, the whole system is thoroughly discredited. Castles built upon sand.
#4 arhooley
What they did, quite simply, was to “cherry-pick” their data, throwing out any observations which would conflict with the theory, and if that didn’t work, “interpolate” (i.e. “make up out of whole cloth”) “data” that didn’t conflict with the (pre-determined) conclusion.
A good example of this sort of pseudo-scientific three-card monte’ is the “Yamal scandal”, in which tree-ring analysis was used to “prove” AGW. To achieve this, the scientist in question chose a total of 12 tree-ring samples which showed what he wanted to prove. He unfortunately had to ignore over 200 other samples from the same group that showed no trace of warming in the same timespan. When the rest of the samples were factored in, the overall trends showed the usual yearly fluctuations, but not an upward trend in the last half of the 20th century- which was the exact opposite of what the researcher in question wanted to prove.
When I look at the behavior of the AGW crowd, and that of the “Creation Science” and “Intelligent Design” lot such as the Discovery Institute, I see very similar behaviors on display;
1. Cherry-picking of data to “prove” a preconceived theory;
2. Peremptory discarding or even destruction of data which does not support the theory;
3. Refusal to “show the work” to anyone not “of the Faith”;
4. “Peer review” within a small group that mainly engages in mutual self-congratulation on their higher degree of “enlightenment” (“My, aren’t we special!”);
5. And ad hominem attacks on anyone who challenges them. (The demsnds for “Nuremburg-style” trials for “AGW deniers”, the accusation that “Creation Science” doubters cannot “prove Darwin”, but are merely “atheistic unbelievers”, etc.)
Another example of this in an unrelated field was the Michael Bellesisles hoax, in which a researcher who was devoted to anti-Second Amendment causes wrote a book, “Arming America”, in which he “proved” that gun ownership was rare in the U.S. prior to the post- World War Two period; his objective was to destroy the NRA’s position that the right to keep and bear arms was a tradtion long before it was written into the Constitution (he admitted this much in his preface and conclusions).
To do so, he had to ignore or misinterpret existing Colonial records, and even claim he had “studied” records that never existed to begin with. Bellesisles was a social lion because the “enlightened elite’” wanted to believe him. Then other researchers who backtracked his references to attempt to confirm his work found that they couldn’t, because most of it he simply made up to support his thesis. In the end, Bellesisles was shown to have falsified his work, and in fact ended up proving the exact opposite of his original preferred theory, by default.
This is the way real science works- which is why lying is a very bad idea for a real scientist.
As someone trained in laboratory science, and who practiced it as part of law enforcement (where we testified under oath because if we were wrong, or worse yet lying, the wrong person would go to jail), I find the behavior of both the AGW believers and the CS/ID believers inexcusable in the same way Bellesisles’ was. They are obsessed with a “search for Truth” that will lead to power. This is not science.
A quote from the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” comes to my mind here. While it’s Indy talking to his class about archeology, it’s applicable to all sciences. Paraphrased, it goes;
“(Science) is about Facts, not Truth. If you’re looking for Truth, the Philosophy class is right down the hall.”
The AGW crowd need to go to divinity school. Not try to turn science into a church where “unbelievers” are excommunicated for challenging the Dogma.
As for the CS/ID crowd, most of them came from divinity school to begin with. That’s where they should remain, and stop pretending to be something they are not. Namely, people who do real science.
clear ether
eon
arhooley (4):
>how does one replicate the claim that the average temperature of the Earth….
If one can’t replicate this claim for the reasons you stated, how does one even originate it? I’m asking because I don’t understand how Phil Jones et. al. got this corrupt data they wouldn’t share (not a scientist here by a long shot). I thought some significant portion of it came from proxies such as tree rings and glaciers.
The proxy data is generally for older temperatures, past the point where people started keeping records, but yes that’s the other problem. Temperature estimates developed from proxy data such as tree rings depend highly on interpretation of that data; a thick tree ring may be due to a higher temperature, or simply more rain, or other factors. I don’t have the citation handy, but one statistician showed that the entire “hockey stick” feature of the famous historic temperature curve (which was generated from several sets of ice-core and tree-ring proxies) was due to one set of trees in a data collection, all from one location.
Something the Professor touched on is worthy of more discussion, I think.
The way most grant programs work is an open invitation to this kind of data-fudging.
In short, if you go to a government agency and say, “I’ve examined X and found that there’s no danger or crisis from it,” the bureaucrats are likely to say, “thank you very much, now go away.”
However, if you go to the same agency and say, “I’ve studied X and it could be a disaster for our country or for the world!” they’re likely to start shoveling money your way, saying, “quick, find a solution!”
Thus, the entire grant process is geared towards making up crises, even if they don’t truly exist, just to keep the government funds coming.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any easy solution for this problem, but just understanding how grants work can help smart people determine if a crisis is real or being made up in order to get more pork.
Dr. Matt (7):
Excellent article (though you could mention Popper).
let us take the ozone layer in the context of this lovely article: 1) it isn’t a complex model based on restricted data, it’s a bit f’ing hole in the sky that everyone who looked saw. 2) it changed over a known time and this was observed 3) my textbooks in medical school said melanoma was a disease of the elderly, the derm clinic said it was a disease of early middle age !
Everything fit; we acted (the ability to get rid of some of the worst chemicals was economically easy) and the ozone hole stopped growing….
Here is where you have to be VERY careful. Proximity does not imply causality, and we only ran one (1) test of the ozone hole/CFC correlation. It is entirely possible that the whole thing was sheer coincidence and that the ozone hole grows and shrinks and just happened to do so in phase with our efforts to control CFC’s. It is also possible that some other factor – say a massive volcano, like Mt. Pinitubo, injected large quantities of chlorine into the upper stratosphere at just the right time. Personally, I’m wondering how heavier-than-air man-made CFC’s got into the upper stratosphere. In truth, we simply cannot realistically say that it was proven that man-made chlorine compounds caused the ozone hole without a lot more work.
Similarly for global warming.
First of all, you cannot confuse local effects (“total fog in Late November in Maryland”) with global conditions. There are simply too many factors that could cause a temporary warming in Maryland without necessary being global or even continental in nature. I might point out the colder-than-normal weather in the midwest recently. Similarly, the AGW activists go around citing decreases in one polar-bear population group and ice melting on one part of Antarctica as evidence of global warming while the overall number of polar bears is actually up and ice on the other side of Antarctica is growing.
Secondly, even if the global temperature is rising, keeping in mind Francis’ note in posting 1 a “global temperature” is going to be an average of averages over long periods of time. Look at any historical temperature graph and it goes all over the place. Is the current “instantaneous” temperature merely a short-term bump? When talking about these things you cannot look at one year’s or even a decade’s temperatures in isolation. Look at the historical temperature data for the past 500,000 years and you can see that temperatures rise and spike – and then we went into an ice age. The system is, to put it mildly, not smooth.
Finally, is any of this related to human activity? Do we have even a cursory effect on the global temperature? AGW activists bewail the megatons of CO2 that human activity puts into the atmosphere, without realizing that even that is a small fraction of one percent of the totality of greenhouse gasses put in the atmosphere by nature. One volcano going off emits more gasses then we do in an entire year. And, of course, there is the Sun – which is not quite as constant as people seem to think.
eon, Paul of Alexandria –
Thanks for the responses. Frank’s line, “an average computed from taking the data at thousands of temperature stations all across the globe,” is what has me confused, since it suggests that the motley CRU actually did visit thousands of temperature stations and somehow dug up records dating from 1900. Clearly, that is not what happened.
A unsettling look at the herd instinct come to rest in the the world faith of scientism. Aided by government largess and a media that never saw a problem that didn’t have a government answer, of sorts.
Taken as a whole, and considering the problems this movement has always had, weighed against the faith and dogmatism sustained over decades and the threats it posed, this is both stunning and depressing.
Rationality? You have to wonder.
#14 Paul of Alexandria
I might add that the “ozone-hole panic” coincided with a period of high sunspot activity that came before the “Maunder Minimum” of a few years later. The result of this mechanism in the Sun was;
1. An increase in particle emission from the Sun (the “solar wind”) that reached not only Earth, but the rest of the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars), and could be measured by planetary astronomers (in fact, it was picked up by our Mars landers);
2. Due to the fact that the Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from solar particle emission to a certain extent, is not a “true” sphere, but rather a torus (i.e., is shaped rather like a doughnut), and is weakest over the Poles, the polar regions got a serious dose of ionized particles;
3. Ozone, being a highly-reactive molecule itself, when hit by those particles, jumped about two quantum energy levels per molecule, and each molecule was thereby accelerated in its velocity at an altitude where the Mean Free Path of any gas molecule is measured, not in nanometers but in centimeters or even full meters (i.e., low ambient pressure/ near-vacuum/ “the edge of space”).
As a result, at least part of the “ozone loss” that caused the “ozone hole” was apparently caused by ionized particles from the solar wind “bumping” ozone molecules velocity-wise to the point where they actually escaped Earth’s gravity, or possibly destroyed them completely by ionization. (So far, the debate over which one was the main result, or both were equally, continues amongst upper-atmosphere specialists.)
Once the Sun quieted down (i.e., went to the Maunder Minimum state) and the solar wind emissions dropped back to a lower intensity, the “ozone hole” began to “close”, as once more the atmosphere’s ozone-production rate was not being exceeded by the loss rate due to solar wind ionization.
The punch line is that this is apparently a regular and repeating feature of solar wind activity; when the Sun is in a “high” sunspot cycle, and the solar wind emission level goes up, Bang!- down goes the ozone level in the polar upper atmosphere, and the result is a “hole”. Which closes back up again when the Sun calms down. (Take a Miltown, Sol.) This has been happening for, literally, millions of years on a regular basis.
The fact that it only got attention during the “Ozone Hole/CFC Panic” can be explained simply; up to then, our technology hadn’t been up to detecting such fluctuations in the ozone levels of the upper atmosphere. And the ability to do so arrived just as a political pressure group (the environmentalists) with an ax to grind (their hatred of CFCs and/or technology in general)were in a position to use the new data for propaganda purposes.
By the way, two years ago the same systems that detected the “ozone hole” of the early Eighties showed that the “hole” over the Arctic was getting larger again. The difference is, this time they didn’t have CFCs to blame it on… so they just put it down it to “sunspot activity”.
Surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say.
clear ether
eon
Dr. Frank J. Tipler on PJM!!!
For some reason, my world just lurched sideways…
Wow…
Not in a rock-star groupie fashion or manner, but close…real close.
Thanks Dr. Tipler.
Prof. Tipler – It’s worse than you think because it can go beyond climatology. Non-scientists may begin to doubt scientists in other fields.
BTW – Follow up on that Darwin thing. The punctuated equillibrium espoused Gould does not conform at all to Darwinism. Indeed, while there is no doubt evolution, the Darwinian model is simply inadequate to explain it. Don’t take my word for tht – just look at the inside of a cell and have someone explain to you how that got here through random chance?
Beautiful column, Professor, thank you.
We now know that the truth has been hidden.
When the anti-capitalist subversives who have woven this net of lies will not relent (and they will not), we will know that
we live in a totalitarian regime.
The media are already under control, the universities have been under control for decades.
Without the Internet, today we would be living the dark life of Eastern Europe in the Fifties,of China and Cuba.
THEREFORE
The subversives will attack the freedom of the net.
It’s just matter of time.
20. Jack in Silver Sprint:
“just look at the inside of a cell and have someone explain to you how that got here through random chance?”
Single cell life formed on earth as soon as the oceans formed 4.5 billion years ago. It took 2 billion years of life in the oceans before complex eukaryote cells evolved. It took another 1.7 billion years for eukaryote cells to evolve into multiple-cell organisms. It is only 800 m.y.a that we see the radiation of life as we see it today.
Early life was not much more than “soap” bubbles containing uncatalized metabolisms. The cells you see in text books have had a huge amounts of time in a huge ecosystem to compete and evolve.
just look at the inside of a cell and have someone explain to you how that got here through random chance?
The words “Darwinism” and “random chance” always reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of natural selection.
Where are all the Global Warming proponents? The silence is deafening.
Just came in to check the score.
Pollution 58
Climate 0
Thanks.
Back to the football game.
Happy Thanksgiving.
i wouldn’t think it politically possible or realistic, of course, but what we need here, for the sake of the world, is to try to make some kind of arrangement whereby, as first step, the Science could and must be decided by scientists alone, without the influence of politicians and questionable doners (oil companies or vested interests).
It would cost a lot of money, but probably less than what it will cost if the world commits dollars to this quacky IPCC (who is really responsible for this climate change scam, anyway? it isn’t Al Gore, he is just in on it) attempt to control the sun the clouds and the climate and our breathing with public dollars.
Set up an equal fund for two major camps: the alarmists and the deniers.
Then, everybody except scientists would need to take one big step back and leave it to the scientists to battle out what the issues of what is causing the climate changes which people are noticing (and also differentiate between the things they thought are due to climate change or mankind)–
and only then, when the brainstorms become theories, and the groups of scientists begin to form around
the different theoretical directions, and begin hypothisizing and making measurements and analysing,
advancing toward certainty: only then would they come to firm, reliable understanding of the climate
which would give them confidence to put it to the test. All based on scientific method and standards. After all, the whole world of international commerce and manufacturing wouldn’t and couldn’t run without standards.
I mean, if I was a scientist trying to design an airplane or something that was supposed to fly, and
carry people safely, I would think that should be a model approach.
So would a Copenhagen agreement work? has the science been correct and proven up until now? Do we have
the confidence to put our theories of reduction and trials of measures, and taxes to the test and not
risk too much along the way with our approaches?
I’m not a scientist. But with this earth climate changing thing, I’m not very confident about it from what I have seen so far. Especially when one listens to some comments being made by people who understand programming and such and are now scrutinizing the CRU data.
Jack in Silver Sprint:
Prof. Tipler – It’s worse than you think because it can go beyond climatology. Non-scientists may begin to doubt scientists in other fields.
–
I’m glad you said that, Jack in Silver Sprint, because it is affirmation of a thought I had back at the end of 2008 when Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize; I had a gut feeling and thought, this can’t go well, the whole thing is too much with controversy entwined and done in secrecy and with contradicting statements; that was my impression — as layman. then I began to read about it and form an opinion.
But I still think it is very uncertain which way this will all go and how people will react, especially if this stuff from CRU gets any traction.
“Climate Science” is, like any other “science” which tries to predict the behavior of np-complete systems, intellectual onanism. The atmosphere and the behavior of the sun are what Roger Penrose terms “not computable”. You’ll have better luck with touts at Hialeah.
Your friendly TV meteorologist gives you the computer predictions. These are not predictions based on physics but rather an analysis of past patterns. Partly cloudy, 10% chance of showers, 72 degrees. Chances of being wrong? Nil. These AGW guys say the earth is going to 1.3 degrees warmer in 100 years? You gotta be kidding me.
A question for Dr. Tipler about climate and the solar wind:
The solar wind is essentially a massive direct current (maybe .01 hz AC?). The core of the earth is an iron ball 2,000 miles in diameter. It rotates once a day in the magnetic field associated with the SW. look like an electrical thingy to me – motor? generator? Might result in currents that heat the core?
It’s been 40 years since I looked at Maxwell’s equations so I don’t know whether tis is significant or not. Thoughts?
happy thanksgiving America; despite everything be happy for everything you’ve had, you have and will have.
The fact is scientists have no clue to what causes Global Warming & Global Cooling. Many of them still debate whether Global Warming/Global Cooling even exists.
No amount of random chance can produce an irreducibly complex system like the Kreb’s Cycle, wherein eight enzymes are required to work together to permit aerobic respiration to work, without any one of which, the entire system breaks down.
I am not a scientist, so I can not argue scientific points. But I have been hearing about global warming for 20+ years. I have yet to see a bit of evidence of it in my daily life.
I see PC MC Mr PC (Poor Citizen) is spinning his POLLUTION protection for the DEBUNKED AGW SCAM as much as he can. tell us PC is CO2 a POLLUTANT?
#20: ‘just look at the inside of a cell and have someone explain to you how that got here through random chance?’
‘random chance’ implies infinite temperature. Life does not exist at infinite temperature. At finite temperature, say 300K, from a given state, the next state is not a random choice from all possible states but a random choice from a very small subset. This subset is not random and is a function of current state.
#20 needs to read the work of Ilya Prigogine.
“I’ve doubted the reliability of the global warming data for some time now,”
Yeah, and the ” we are 8 to 10 years from a tipping point” argument never added up either. After 100+ years of carbon-spewing emissions from our industrial age, how was Kyoto to prevent use from reaching the tipping point when large, growing economies like China and India were not part of the treaty?
And would tweaking emissions to 1990s levels really prevent us from reaching the tipping point (assuming it was real)?
And that the likes of Al Gore and Tom Freidman (sp?) were advocates of this meme, yet dwelled in mansions made the tipping point argument hard to accept too.
While I agree that the death penalty for this crime is not appropriate, I think we should at least make clear that what these frauds were trying to enact would lead to the deaths of many thousands. Whether it happened in terms of medical advances deferred due to the crippling effects on industry of cap and trade or in terms of funding priorities shifted (i.e. AGW “remediation” instead of malaria irradication), hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would be dead in the name of this false religion. What they were attempting was a crime against humanity under the color of science. Lumping them together in hostory with Dr. Josef Mengele is _not_ too harsh.
Of course there is the basic issue with not publishing the data or the models so independent review is possible. Heck, Einstein had to do that. In a sane world, this should have made the debate a non-starter years ago.
Plus, it does not make any sense according to the laws of science, that we can measure the ‘average’ of the earth’s temperature. It is not possible.
And the fact that all AGW models have been incorrect (worse than chance) at predicting temperature is really a large clue isn’t it?
But the fundamental issue remains that no model can predict the open system that is the earth’s atmosphere. In fact no computer would be powerful enough to run the equation if you could develop it.
Lastly, it seems to me that the ‘greenhouse effect’ does not conform to anything we know about thermodynamics. I would like for a physicist to demonstrate the idea, because the only physicists I have read say it is a mangling of science.
Even after the science, any cost-benefit analysis on affecting the earth’s temperature would steer any sane person away from the momentous economic suicide contemplated. In fact we have no recourse but to conclude they have ulterior motives.
Warmer temperatures are in general better for the earth and humans, than colder. So what’s the hate about?
The urgency of acting now at great cost ignores an ever increasing rate of innovation. 150 years ago we were riding horses. Why would we kill our economies now when no one knows what energy will be used in another 100 years?
——————-
So it is these observations that have always, from the beginning, made me an AGW non-believer. If the world politic continues its irrational turn from science and common sense, I believe increasing numbers of people will utilize portable technology and emigrate to smaller, less invasive countries like Costa Rica to escape the madness and the taxes. It is becoming Orwellian.
I will say that “conspiracy” is the wrong word, even in the context of this article. it seems pretty clear in the CRU emails that they do believe in global warming, but are in utter disregard of proper scientific process. and i think the author here agrees with that. There can’t be an unintentional conspiracy, it has to be intentional.
So the virus is a lack of scientific rigor, of putting the goal of getting everyone to agree without ahead of the process required to actually be certain you are right.
I will add that one of the most damning features of the emails are the sheer banality of it. They talk about forging data, suppressing dissent and destroying requested info like you and i might talk about getting some coffee at the office, or if you work for a for profit company, about the hiring process, terminations, our measures of company success, etc. Its like “ho-hum, let’s go use that trick to hide the decline and then start setting up for the office party.” No one even seems be bothered by this conduct, and that is why i suspect that this is a far bigger problem than just one institution.
I have to agree with the above commenter. There are good reasons to believe in common descent.
But Gould did not explain how Darwinism (random mutation + natural selection) can account for sudden appearance of creatures.
I would agree that Darwinian mechanisms don’t explain much of life’s diversity unless you go with a “Darwin of the Gaps” approach.
There are parallels with the climate debate. Doubters of true scientific religion are marginalized. Everyone who disagrees is a denier. All who doubt global warming work for ExxonMobil. All who doubt Darwinism are 7-day Young Earth Creationists.
Dr Tipler,
You might find interesting a post I did about Whiff of Death.(1957)
http://www.randomjottings.net/archives/004145.html
I quoted Asimov’s memoirs…
“…I discovered eventually, that the chief flaw in the book from the standpoint of the publishers was the inadequacy of the motive for the murder. It involved a Ph.D. student faking results, and that seemed a tiny sin to most editorial readers.
When I gave fellow professors an inkling of the plot, however, they shuddered and turned away, obviously suspecting some deep-seated perverse element in my nature even to imagine so heinous a crime. Too little for one group of people, too much for another!…”
Quite a change from now!
It’s interesting that you should use the example of General Relativity because I can prove Einstein was wrong!
While I didn’t have a complete set of orbital data for Mercury to work with, I was able to approximate some of it from measurments of the orbit of Mars. Then after I applied the “Mann Correction Vector” ({-.5,-.25,… } *.75), it clearly showed that Newton was right about the orbit of Mercury after all.
I’d send you my work but why should I when you’d just try to find something wrong with it…
Jack #20, your directing Professor Tipler to ask for advice on “random chance” and the evolution of man gave me the giggles. If you don’t see the humor, I suggest you read his work.
Others: Tipler has a paper on “peer review” from 2003 that I think is on climategate target. I’d provide a link, but do not want to spend the time weeding through the crapola sites to avoid promoting a wrong site. Just google “Tipler Peer Review” if interested.
hey eon,
I thought that sunspot activity has been almost non-existent recently. That makes it hard for recent sunspot activity to cause a hole in the ozone layer now.
Dr. Tipler:
Thank you for the brilliant article. Let us hope against hope that some sanity will prevail on this issue before the greens manage to convince our politicians that mass economic suicide is the only reasonable alternative for western civilization.
First a thought: Earth’s geology is a 5 billion-year record of climate change, ice ages, millenium-long droughts, etc., much worse that anything predicted by the AGW crowd. Given sufficiently accurate instruments and enough readings over time, the big surprise would be if no change could be detected. But detecting change and explaining that change are two very different things.
And now an angle no one seems to be discussing: Given the volume of data — millions of records from thousands of weather stations for starters — surely all this data and anaysis were performed on mainframe computers at various institutions. The people who maintain and service these systems have strict backup and archiving routines and their database managers never delete anything. All data and related code on their servers are archived on and off-site and a lot of it is off-line.
They also maintain transaction records keeping track of who’s accessed the computers and what they did. There would be hell to pay if a computer glitch deleted some achademic’s life work, or a fire destroyed all the work of half the university’s faculty.
So I’ve always been a bit suspicious of the claim that much of the AGW raw data was lost/deleted. It’s likely only lost to the extent that the “owners” of the data didn’t wish to foot the bill to retrieve it from the archived datasets.
Come to think of it, the FBI and Scotland Yard have excellent computer forensics people well skilled in retrieving computer files some crook thought he’d deleted. Now if they can only be interested in doing the digging..
“Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. ”
how’s that degree in climatology coming there, sparky?
Dave@41
You made me spill my Georgian wine all over my new keyboard …
I’ve been engaged in a dialog with a pompous alarmist on my local rag’s forum (which conveniently crashed yesterday). He came down hard on a mild libertarian poster saying: “If you can believe that you won’t fly off the surface of an Earth spinning at thousands of miles an hour, why can’t you believe in the much less counterintutive fact of AGW?” Of course, the bully’s conclusion was willful ignorance. I gently intervened, the alarmist tried to maintain a “scientific” tone, but eventually had to resort to ad hominem. They’re getting desperate …
Even if all the temperature data were accurate, the tree ring and ice core proxies statistically significant and perfectly preserved, you still have to prove the theory. This has not been done. They can’t explain the Medieval Warm Period, and they can’t explain the warming in the early part of the Twentieth Century, before autos were in widespread use. The idea that they have 90 to 95 percent confidence that humans are causing (did cause?) the warming from 1900 to 1998 is ludicrous.
The main problem with climate models is simply that variables cannot be controlled for. If we could twin off the earth, let conservatives and skeptics depart while leaving liberals and warmers here to exist without burning fossil fuels, then we could see what the effect would be.
Hey, there’s an idea….
@Mandamus: It’s coming about as well as James Hansen’s PhD in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Iowa in 1967, which was based on dissertation research that involved a computer model of the atmosphere of Venus. Does Hansen’s concentration in his early post-graduate work on planetary astronomy disqualify him from writing about and commenting on terrestrial global warming?
“My own view is that execution is a bit harsh, and that the standard penalty of being dismissed from one’s job is quite sufficient.”
I’m not as sure. If this had (has?) formed the basis of actions that resulted in the destruction of an economy and suppression of rights, it’s easy to imagine deaths occurring. Is there NO circumstance leading to death, destitution, and ruin that justifies the death penalty? If there’s even one individual deserving of that fate, then we’re arguing about whom to execute and where to draw the line and not the basic principle.
Frankly, this little different from the Nazi scientists who experimented on the lesser peoples with one exception. These climate frauds simply make up the rationales employed by others. East Anglia in that instance is no different than the conference at Wannsee.
Mandamus displays the fundamental error called “credentialism”.
If X is a sloppy fool who makes things up, and Y is a careful rigorous researcher who documents the data and process completely, then Y is a scientist and X is not — and the fact that X is die Herr Professor Doktor with a long list of publications is irrelevant.
To a certain extent, we have to depend on credentials. It just takes too long and gets too complicated to check everybody. The next best thing is to have scientists check one another, as Dr. Tipler says. But there is one thing the most ignorant layman can use as a touchstone: if the person makes the data, the experimental procedure, and the methods of analysis public so that others can check it, that person is a scientist. If the person keeps the data, procedure, and/or analysis close to the vest and requires that it be believed because of credentials, that person is a liar and should not be trusted in any way.
And no, bleating about “proprietary rights” because the putative owner doesn’t want the data published doesn’t change that in any way. What it does do is make it impossible to do science with that data.
Regards,
Ric
Much of the historic data for global temperatures are not temperature records at all … the the last 50 years we have some rough global temp records but before that its almost useless and spotty …
the tree ring and ice core proxy data used to “fake” temperature records for the last several thousand years are simply wild a** guesses … every scientist could make up his/her own “adjustments” to convert a tree ring measurement to a temperature reading.
The only way they could “prove” that the latest warming actually seen in the real temperature records was caused by CO2 and thus man was to show that we have never had temperatures this high before. It was never about proving todays temperature but always about showing that the Medieval Warm Period never occured … with a MWP the theory of AGW dies …
nobody questions the temp records for much of the last 100 years, they are hard temp records … we have seen warming (although the urban heat island effect is much of the rise) … what they needed to show was that it was “unique” so they could blame it on CO2 … of course the historic records for CO2 are very clear and not measured by proxies but but direct measurements of ice cores … and the historic records of CO2 shows many periods of much higher CO2 in the atmo …
So the AGW crowd has 2 problems, kill the Medieval Warm Period and Ignore the CO2 record …
They have managed to fail at both …
Dr. Tipler: The list of thanks owed is too long to present in its entirety, so please let me at least thank you for “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,” “The Physics of Immortality,” “The Physics of Christianity,” “The Value/Fact Distinction: Coase’s Theorem Unifies Normative and Positive Economics,” “New Axioms for Rigorous Bayesian Probability,” “The Obama-Tribe ‘Curvature of Constitutional Space’ Paper is Crackpot Physics,” and your wonderful debate with Dr. Lawrence Krauss at CalTech in 2007 (). I’ve learned a great deal from you, look forward to continuing to do so, and especially look forward to applying your and Dr. Duprés new axioms in my work.
As I attempted to both underscore and explore further in my question to you and Dr. Krauss at the CalTech debate, I have a great appreciation for your insistence on adherence to scientific philosophy regardless of where it may lead you. I have always found the critiques of the Omega Point theory whose basic structure reduces to “this is crazily speculative physics” when, in fact, the theory is grounded in the best understanding of physics we currently possess and offers testable hypotheses to be quite odd when stacked up against the untestable hypotheses of, e.g. string theory, inflation theory, etc.
Given the risks that you have been willing to take in terms of your professional reputation in your development of the Omega Point theory, it comes as no surprise that you have been willing to lend your support of science, properly understood, to another question of great political, social, and economic import. It is precisely that reclaiming of the mantle of proper science by scientists of firm conscience–and here I must also note George Monbiot’s wonderful essay at –that sustains my faith in the enterprise despite these recent dark events.
For all of that and much more, thank you so much, Dr. Tipler.
Best regards,
Paul Snively
The instant I heard vice president Al Gore declare “the debate is over” I recognized advocacy independent from and straying orthogonal to any interest in what is true. What surprises me is how easily so many were taken in by it. I think there is something in this phenomenon; ultimately Pilate’s question “What is truth.” and how is it different from “belief” that we don’t quite understand.
Re. #15. arhooley:
There are two “temperature records” that need to be considered: the instrument record (ie thermometers) that goes back to the 1800s; and the paleo-record, which is constructed from a variety of proxy data (e.g. ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments). The instrument record does involve daily temperature readings taken from thousands of sites around the globe. For some insight into the issues involved in the measurement and adjustment of these individual temperature measurements see http://www.surfacestations.org, a site dedicated to surveying the accuracy of the US temperature measurement network. Here you will see some of the problems involved in getting accurate measurements of temperature over time at individual stations. Moving from individual station observations to a global average temperature (one of the key functions of the CRU) involves making various “adjustments” to the raw station-level data, estimations of temperature at locations where data is missing, mathmetical manipulation of the data to construct averages across a global grid and the calculation of a global temperture anomaly. Opportunities abound for the introduction of bias at each stage of temperature adjustment and averaging. The recent disclosure of discrepancies between the raw data and published averages in New Zealand illustrates this point (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/ and subsequent posts at http://www.wattsupwiththat.com).
Some of the FOIA requests denied by CRU were targeted at understanding the adjustments that were made to raw station data and identifying possible bias in the adjustment / averaging process.
Re. #15 by arhooley and an addendum to my comment #55:
For those who may not think the “adjustments” to the raw data discussed in my post above amount for much — see the Climate Skeptic blog post at http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/11/yet-more-stuff-we-always-suspected-but-its-nice-to-have-proof.html where the point is made that with respect to the US climate network the adjustments account for over 80 (yes, eight zero) percent of the observed temperature increase in the US since 1940.
Those interested in the details of the adjustment process in the US should see
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html, with particular attention to the graph at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif where the cumulative impact of adjustments since 1900 is plotted.
Does it seem odd to anyone that most of the difference between raw and final data occurs after 1960, just around the time that anthropogenic impact on climate was said to have accelerated? Hummm… Maybe we should have a look at NOAA’s emails?
# 46-MADAMUS-before you question the authors credentials you might like to know-Mathematical Physics plays a very large role in climate and weather modeling. So does other related sciences like Earth Science and hydrology. One other thing to bring up. Weather is not an excat science. Weather as we know it occurs ONLY in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere. Hence, the entire atmosphere does not play a role in climate by and large. So any weather forecaster trying to sell themselves as “climate change” experts are full of bunk. Ditto with climatologists. Climatology is basically a history of the weather in a particular region and is useless to long term patterns of earths weather(the age of the dinosaurs , did TREX care what the forecast was?). So these Emails seem to indicate one thing mattered. The IDEOLOGY of those that supported AGW. What a surprise. Commies in academia. Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky have NOTHING on Micheal Mann or Phil Jones. All commie ideologues and traitors. We once used to do some bad things to those who committed treason.
Facts are stubborn things. Where’s the email that changes this hard fact?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
“In summary, we know that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is entirely caused by fossil fuel burning and deforestation because many independent observations show that the carbon content has also increased in both the oceans and the land biosphere (after deforestation). If the oceans or land had contributed to the rise in atmospheric CO2, they would hold less carbon. Their response to warming may be real, but it is less than their response to increasing CO2 and other climate changes for the moment.”
Are there any betting houses or odds-makers out there willing to take a stab at which country will be the first to issue an arrest warrant for these eco-fascists? My money will be on the Australians as they seem to be the only people left in this world with the backbone and common sense to point out that Emperor Gore has no clothes.
yet the main stream media are barely covering this news…
Man made global warming is a con..
99.9% of the world no nothing:
One braveish, newspaper in the uk, has some blogs on it, BUT HAS NOT made the print version.
To the bbc AGW (MMGW) is a religion, mann and gore are it’s prophets.
IF you WANT to get the story reported, link the following link into the comments section, of the walls treet journa, new york time, tec.
onto cnn, cbs, or their counterparts around the world.
UK TELEGRAPH,
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018173/climategate-sack-no-longer-credible-michael-mann-from-ipcc-urges-climatologist/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100018034/climategate-%20%20e-mails-sweep-america-may-scuttle-barack-obamas-cap-and-trade-laws/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100017954/us-congress-investigates-climategate-e-mails-this-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-agw/
and many more:
Mark York is actually citing realclimate…..ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!
Don’t you know who that is?
Mandamus: Go find me somebody with a PhD in ‘climatology.’ We’ll wait.
Allegedly Hadely-CRU-IPCC had this data. The documents directory the released files indicates that this data was always fragmentary and incomplete, and was insufficient to estimate global temperatures to sufficient accuracy. However, the data is not present in the documents directory. The email directory leads the cynical reader to suspect that the reason for its absence was that this information was destroyed to prevent it from being leaked.
Mandamus
‘Climatology’ in the sense of understanding the complex systems involved requires about 100 or so disciplines. A “PhD in climatology” would require someone with about 100 PhDs in fields like physics, astrophysics, sub atomic particle interactions, geology, atmospherics, clouds, etc. etc. etc. If you find one let me know I have some questions for them.
The most vocal ‘climatologists’ have degrees in politics, law and business.
Gould seems to be correct in his explanation of the fossil record. Recall that he was on the team denying that human characteristics such as intelligence are inherited. When the real science drove them back against the wall, they ended up denying that intelligence existed at all, that IQ tests measured nothing, or that no human breeding populations did (or could exhibit any differences in intelligence. The infamous hockey-stick graph required that the historical record of the Medieval Climatic Optimum be expunged (not only was it obviously hotter then, but it increased crop production in Europe). And anyhow, where did Greenland get it’s name? Even more insane is the fact that they are denying that the weather has been moderating (at least in the US) for the last 10 years. Sorry, I’ve been doing my own observations. Science can explain lots of mysterious facts, but don’t expect me to accept their explanations of facts that history shows, or that I personally know, are not true.
It is not enough that these people lose their jobs. They should never hold a position of trust again. Especially they should not be trusted to teach young people about science or anything else.
In addition, they should be pursued in a court of law for repayment of any and all government monies awarded on the basis of fraudulent data.
Let them live out their years mopping floors somewhere–but not at McDonalds, which employs many young people.
Hi: Ruebacca, Jack in Silver Sprint: “just look at the inside of a cell and have someone explain to you how that got here through random chance?” Ok now just relax, put all the baggage on the cart take a deep breath. OK! Now can anyone tell me how long a “Second” is for “God?” oe mother nature if you like?, yeah so we can’t answer many others either. So why try? yup its fun, but when it makes you angry, well thats not going to move the conversation forward. Another question I have is could the sun have say a 250,000 year cycle? can’t answer that one either. So I’m content to take the little victory just handed to us by Mr or Ms “FOIA” thats for those of us who think we are really a small troupe on a really large stage. Relax, it could be worse, someone could find a real comet! with us as a real target. Check “6″