Wind Farms cause global warming

[Jccarlton]

You have to ask yourselves, if climate science is so settled, why do Mann, Jones, et al, go to such lengths to hide what they are doing?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/c ... more-62524

I don't have to ask it, you have given the answer. You would have to be exceptional not to react to such vituperous character assasination. Look at it in reverse.

Since when is filing a FOI request a character assasination?

[Jccarlton]

Mann, to Jones to Triffa and so on, discussing this trick or how to manipulate that data, this grad student's career to wreck, discussing how to get that jounal editor fired because he dared to publish outside the orthodoxy, complaining about that person wanting FOI, on and on. One or two, you could say, well somebody was having a bad day. Hundreds upon hundreds and you have to say something is really rotten here.

How many journal editors have lost their job? And could this because they did not do it very well?

You need to prove:
(a) 100s
(b) no, they were correuptly sacked

before your comment holds water.

Your accusation is that the system is corrupy remember, not that Mann or anyone else writes a few ill-judges e-ms.

You never written a private e-m that woudl get you into bad trouble if broadcast over the internet?

Here's the latest example that I know of:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/02/b ... ell-paper/
It's fairly clear that Wagner resigned due to pressure from Mann and Jones, along with others who were demanding Spencer's head on a platter.

[Jccarlton]

No-one is interested in past temperatures as press story, unless with some ulterior motive e.g. "Hey - the scientistss got it wrong". Even then no-one cares about scientists getting it wrong unless there is some current political issue, like AGW, which makes bashing scientists newsworthy.

So ignore all the press stories. Have a look at the scientific consensus as determined by the totality of peer reviewed literature.

That was for GW in the 1970s, but with a lot of uncertainty. Between then and now the uncertainty has steadily reduced, so that now 99% of published literature will reckon GW is going to happen.

What happens when the consensus is manufactured? When peer review is controlled by a small cabal of like minded individuals? When journal editors and scientists have their careers ruined because the may have dared to publish something outside the orthodoxy. When criticism and opposing views is deliberately suppressed? When this small group denies acsess to data and algorythmns so results cannot be reproduced? Because we now know that this is exactly what has happened to climate science. We have the team's internal communications thanks to climategate and what's there is not science and it's not pretty. Until we can get some degree of objectivity from climatology and not the Lysenkoist echo chamber we have now, there will not be any science in climatology.

Wishful thnking affects everyone. You want to think this. Before climategate were you a climate skeptic? I bet you were.

Those e-mails showed a few climate scientists being political, having been subjected to character assasination and 1000 people claiming they are wrong because of the same internet myths.

I have some sympathy, but it is stupid. However if you ignbore the politics of both sides, and look at the science, there is no contest:

AGW is certain

climate sensitivity to CO2 is uncertain, but likely high enough for CO2 emmissions already in the air to create very substantial change

Much about the science is still up for grabs, and the politics of what to in this situation is unclear. But those who deny the science are lazy, or stupid, or prejudiced.

You have to be weird to believe in so many well intentioned scientists, most with more interest in the science than the politics, all being part of a conspiracy.

Do I want to think this? My happiest time recently has been reading James Annan's blog (he is a climate scientist. One of the consensus. Which does not mean he manufactures evidence). He was confirming what I have for a while suspected which is that the AR4 estimates of climate sensitivity make the high end tail probabilities much larger than they should be, due to wrong choice of Bayesian prior. That is good news for everyone.

I also hope there is enough unconscious bias in the published science to make the low-end predictions more likely than the high-end ones. But I have to say there is not likley to be a big change, studies have been done and critiqued and compared for long enough now for any big errors to have been found.

Never been around real scientists much have you? the minute anybody says the science is certain you no longer have science you have religion. I have worked in a place where vast sums of time and money were spent on science that is far more certain than climatology and the scientists would have been ecstatic to find that they were wrong because that means new science. That attitude is completely absent in climatology and that is why I have been a skeptic.

[tomclarke]

What happens when the consensus is manufactured? When peer review is controlled by a small cabal of like minded individuals? When journal editors and scientists have their careers ruined because the may have dared to publish something outside the orthodoxy. When criticism and opposing views is deliberately suppressed? When this small group denies acsess to data and algorythmns so results cannot be reproduced? Because we now know that this is exactly what has happened to climate science. We have the team's internal communications thanks to climategate and what's there is not science and it's not pretty. Until we can get some degree of objectivity from climatology and not the Lysenkoist echo chamber we have now, there will not be any science in climatology.

Wishful thnking affects everyone. You want to think this. Before climategate were you a climate skeptic? I bet you were.

Those e-mails showed a few climate scientists being political, having been subjected to character assasination and 1000 people claiming they are wrong because of the same internet myths.

I have some sympathy, but it is stupid. However if you ignbore the politics of both sides, and look at the science, there is no contest:

AGW is certain

climate sensitivity to CO2 is uncertain, but likely high enough for CO2 emmissions already in the air to create very substantial change

Much about the science is still up for grabs, and the politics of what to in this situation is unclear. But those who deny the science are lazy, or stupid, or prejudiced.

You have to be weird to believe in so many well intentioned scientists, most with more interest in the science than the politics, all being part of a conspiracy.

Do I want to think this? My happiest time recently has been reading James Annan's blog (he is a climate scientist. One of the consensus. Which does not mean he manufactures evidence). He was confirming what I have for a while suspected which is that the AR4 estimates of climate sensitivity make the high end tail probabilities much larger than they should be, due to wrong choice of Bayesian prior. That is good news for everyone.

I also hope there is enough unconscious bias in the published science to make the low-end predictions more likely than the high-end ones. But I have to say there is not likley to be a big change, studies have been done and critiqued and compared for long enough now for any big errors to have been found.

Never been around real scientists much have you? the minute anybody says the science is certain you no longer have science you have religion. I have worked in a place where vast sums of time and money were spent on science that is far more certain than climatology and the scientists would have been ecstatic to find that they were wrong because that means new science. That attitude is completely absent in climatology and that is why I have been a skeptic.

I've spent all my life amongst scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

I was careful about the certain comment. Of technically nothing is certain, but the physics for CO2 increasing trapped heat are very definite and disputed by no-one. And simple enough you could calculate them yourself, in detail. Well, I could, and I guess you could.

There are many things less certain. You could argue that feedbacks were negative not positive - but the physics-based warming effect of CO2 remains.

I should perhaps qualify this to say that AGC (from aerosols) could in principle outweight AGW from CO2. But that is all, and aerosols don't reamin as countried care more about lungs of their inhabitants. Long-term CO2 atmosphere occupancy trumps occupancy of anything else, so continupus emmisions win out.

[tomclarke]

scientists would have been ecstatic to find that they were wrong because that means new science. That attitude is completely absent in climatology and that is why I have been a skeptic.

I can't imagine a climate scientist not ecstatic were AGW to be proved wrong on the lower side.

As it is, all rejoice when it looks like the estimates move towards the lower end of previous.

Who would be ecstatic were models to be proved wrong on the upper side? You would have to be very weird!

But scientists are interested, primarily, in the details of the science. Not about being proved right or wrong. It is a different mindset. You cannot be interested in where new stuff leads you if you are always peering over your shoulder worrying which direction it will take you.

Look, for example, at the recent LGW analysis modelling which leads to climate sensitivities at the lower end of the current range. this is interesting new work, with many uncertainties as has nearly all climate science. I don't see it being ignored.

[tomclarke]

Mann, to Jones to Triffa and so on, discussing this trick or how to manipulate that data, this grad student's career to wreck, discussing how to get that jounal editor fired because he dared to publish outside the orthodoxy, complaining about that person wanting FOI, on and on. One or two, you could say, well somebody was having a bad day. Hundreds upon hundreds and you have to say something is really rotten here.

How many journal editors have lost their job? And could this because they did not do it very well?

You need to prove:
(a) 100s
(b) no, they were correuptly sacked

before your comment holds water.

Your accusation is that the system is corrupy remember, not that Mann or anyone else writes a few ill-judges e-ms.

You never written a private e-m that woudl get you into bad trouble if broadcast over the internet?

Here's the latest example that I know of:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/02/b ... ell-paper/
It's fairly clear that Wagner resigned due to pressure from Mann and Jones, along with others who were demanding Spencer's head on a platter.

How about you post info from something other than a known polemic site? I mean, you know you will get spin at the least, if not factual distortion...

So: here is an editor of a minor journal who published a not great paper which turns out to have obvious faults not caught by peer review. Happens all the time. However the paper is highly politicised by people who want above all to sway public opinion against climate science. So he resigns, giving as his reason that he should have foreseen and prevented the politicisation.

Well I would not resign in that situation, and I don't know many who think he should have, but it must be uncomfortable.

It is highly regrettable that climate science is so politicised - but this is - primarily - from those outside the science community. And it is understandable that something which has real political consequences should be so politicised. Look at the time it took to get the effects of tobacco smoking accepted...

Roger Pielke Sr. has accused Wagner of ‘politicizing’ the situation by resigning, but this is completely backwards. The politicisation of the situation came almost entirely from Spencer and Taylor, and Wagner’s resignation is a recognition that he should have done a better job to prevent that. Statements from Ross McKitrick that Wagner is a “grovelling, terrified coward” for his action are completely beyond the pale (as well as being untrue, possibly libelous, and were stated with no evidence whatsoever).

The question has also arisen why the paper itself has not been retracted (and indeed will not be). However, that would be a really big step. I can only think of two climate science related papers that have been retracted in recent years – one was for plagiarism (among other problems: Said et al, 2008) and the other was because of a numerical calculation error that fatally undermined the reported results. There are of course many, many more papers that are wrong, mistaken and/or ‘bad’ (in the sense defined above) and yet very few retractions occur. I think (rightly) that people feel that the best way to deal with these papers is within the literature itself, and in this case it is happening this week in GRL (Dessler, 2011), and in Remote Sensing in a few months.

[Jccarlton]

Wishful thnking affects everyone. You want to think this. Before climategate were you a climate skeptic? I bet you were.

Those e-mails showed a few climate scientists being political, having been subjected to character assasination and 1000 people claiming they are wrong because of the same internet myths.

I have some sympathy, but it is stupid. However if you ignbore the politics of both sides, and look at the science, there is no contest:

AGW is certain

climate sensitivity to CO2 is uncertain, but likely high enough for CO2 emmissions already in the air to create very substantial change

Much about the science is still up for grabs, and the politics of what to in this situation is unclear. But those who deny the science are lazy, or stupid, or prejudiced.

You have to be weird to believe in so many well intentioned scientists, most with more interest in the science than the politics, all being part of a conspiracy.

Do I want to think this? My happiest time recently has been reading James Annan's blog (he is a climate scientist. One of the consensus. Which does not mean he manufactures evidence). He was confirming what I have for a while suspected which is that the AR4 estimates of climate sensitivity make the high end tail probabilities much larger than they should be, due to wrong choice of Bayesian prior. That is good news for everyone.

I also hope there is enough unconscious bias in the published science to make the low-end predictions more likely than the high-end ones. But I have to say there is not likley to be a big change, studies have been done and critiqued and compared for long enough now for any big errors to have been found.

Never been around real scientists much have you? the minute anybody says the science is certain you no longer have science you have religion. I have worked in a place where vast sums of time and money were spent on science that is far more certain than climatology and the scientists would have been ecstatic to find that they were wrong because that means new science. That attitude is completely absent in climatology and that is why I have been a skeptic.

I've spent all my life amongst scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

I was careful about the certain comment. Of technically nothing is certain, but the physics for CO2 increasing trapped heat are very definite and disputed by no-one. And simple enough you could calculate them yourself, in detail. Well, I could, and I guess you could.

There are many things less certain. You could argue that feedbacks were negative not positive - but the physics-based warming effect of CO2 remains.

I should perhaps qualify this to say that AGC (from aerosols) could in principle outweight AGW from CO2. But that is all, and aerosols don't reamin as countried care more about lungs of their inhabitants. Long-term CO2 atmosphere occupancy trumps occupancy of anything else, so continupus emmisions win out.

The problem is that the warmists are comparing apple and oranges after throwing in the odd computer models. they are looking at the properties of CO2 at 100% and using them to model results in the atmosphere where CO2 exists in very small percentages. The problem is that computer models don't havr the limitations of the physics of the real world and will if you are not careful will blithely do things like violate the first law of thermodynamics. That means that if you see a runaway effect if you know what you are doing you look for a term that uses a linear dependency on something that it shouldn't. In James Hansen's climate that term was CO2 which he had it's properties tied to temperature in a more or less linear fashion in increased CO2 leads to higher temperature which leads to more CO2 and there's your runaway. I looked at one of Hansen's papers one day and there it was clear as day, why his computer models would runaway from themelves. The problem is that in reality CO2 absorbtion is not dependent on temperature, but on radiation frequency. The reason this is important is because CO2 will only absorb radiation on those very narrow peaks. If all the radiation in those very small peaks is already being absorbed, which satelite data seems to indicate is the case then even if the atmosphere has significantly more CO2 in it the temperature will not be affected. You can believe what ever you want, but that doesn't change the physics one bit.

[Betruger]

There is zero evidence that good papers contrary to orthodoxy are suppressed.

Sorry but we don't even need to argue anything even that elaborate here. I am only saying that people involved in peer review are less than impartial depending on who they review. This is no lie and I have nothing to show for it other than my word and the word of someone who simply has nothing to gain from lying to my face.

I guess on the cooling/warming bit, you are saying it's not at all established.. ?

[tomclarke]

There is zero evidence that good papers contrary to orthodoxy are suppressed.

Sorry but we don't even need to argue anything even that elaborate here. I am only saying that people involved in peer review are less than impartial depending on who they review. This is no lie and I have nothing to show for it other than my word and the word of someone who simply has nothing to gain from lying to my face.

I guess on the cooling/warming bit, you are saying it's not at all established.. ?

define what is "it" and I'll say what is established. Some things are, some thoings are mostly (say 90%) some things are not.

No system is perfect, and peer review is only as good as the reviewers. But it does not need to be. A bit like democracy, it is not perfect, but is the best we have.

Anyone with a decent paper can submit it to many journals, with different reviewers. And even not decent climate skeptic papers often get published, I don't know of a good paper not published? After all, everything is available....

So my point is that overall peer review works. Not that in every individual case it is perfect. You are arguing that in one known to you case it was imperfect.

Can I also suggest that in your example if the person who informed you was not published, and believes this due to bias from reviewers, this may be a matter of opinion where his opinion will naturally lie on one side. But maybe your information is of a different sort.

[Betruger]

Many cases is what I was told. There were details of some of the instances and in some cases it was just people defending their reputation and/or "rice bowl" situations. You admit the system is flawed so we're in agreement, I don't have any stake myself.

"It" - I remember reading about (don't remember where or any details, sorry) a study showing that the natural trend would be for cooling if not for AGW.

Irrelevant but saying it anyway - I'm not going to touch climate change with a 10 foot pole myself, way too much politics and no usefulness -- I try and be clean and that's all I could do to affect the thing anyway.

[tomclarke]

Many cases is what I was told. There were details of some of the instances and in some cases it was just people defending their reputation and/or "rice bowl" situations. You admit the system is flawed so we're in agreement, I don't have any stake myself.

"It" - I remember reading about (don't remember where or any details, sorry) a study showing that the natural trend would be for cooling if not for AGW.

Irrelevant but saying it anyway - I'm not going to touch climate change with a 10 foot pole myself, way too much politics and no usefulness -- I try and be clean and that's all I could do to affect the thing anyway.

I don't admit the system is flawed. People are flawed. I can't think of a better system. Can you?

Natural trend - over what timescale? Except over very long timescales we don't have much handle on natural trends, there are two many variables. But there is no cooling trend ever seen in the past on the timescale of curent warming, anyway, so although it sounds comparable to AGW, it is not.

One of the many factoids that propagates because it should like evidence against AGW being anything to worry about?

[Betruger]

Yes, ok, the system meaning all essential elements which includes people. Weakest link sort of deal. I'm not trying to play with words.

No I can't think of a better system.

One of the many factoids that propagates because it should like evidence against AGW being anything to worry about?

Don't know what you mean. The study's tentative conclusions as I remember them is that we are having AGW instead of natural cooling. That human influence is overriding what would otherwise be an opposite temperature trend.
I don't remember any refs or details with which to dig this study up, so I guess that's as far as I can inquire about/argue the subject.

[vernes]

Only one solution*, in their minds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

*As in "Final Solution".

Ugh, seriously? You take an arbitrary monument and just connect it to whatever group you fancy?

[tomclarke]

Yes, ok, the system meaning all essential elements which includes people. Weakest link sort of deal. I'm not trying to play with words.

No I can't think of a better system.

One of the many factoids that propagates because it should like evidence against AGW being anything to worry about?

Don't know what you mean.

Neither do I. Apologies! I meant that there any number of individual vignettes which propagate on the internet and which appear to support a specific anti-science message (creationism, anti-AGW, to name two). Alhough when examined closely the individual vignettes are not incompatible with the relevant science (evolutionary theory, current climate modelling) they can taken as a whole, without careful examination, seem like strong evidence against.

The study's tentative conclusions as I remember them is that we are having AGW instead of natural cooling. That human influence is overriding what would otherwise be an opposite temperature trend.
I don't remember any refs or details with which to dig this study up, so I guess that's as far as I can inquire about/argue the subject.

There are many trends on decadal, multi-decadal timescales which can modify, or temporarily over-ride, whatever overall trend there is. Climate (and especially regional microclimate, which is what we experience) is very variable on short timescales! It is just very unclear how large each of these is, given the real temperature record comes from variability on many timescales and all of these different factors have some uncertainty associated.

It has been true in the past century that at different times man-made aerosol increase has roughly cancelled CO2 forcing, and also that volcanic activity has temporarily reversed it: so it is quite possible.

Best wishes, Tom

[Teahive]

40 to 50 billion (even more if desired) provided we stop being stupid with the fossil fuels. Polywells (maybe) or MSRs (undoubtedly) can provide sufficient energy to feed, clothe, and house all those people in upper-middle-class (US) style for millenia. Material resources are NOT an issue. Energy is the only issue.

That may also include getting rid of energy, though, not just generating it. There's an upper limit to the amount of heat we can release into the atmosphere before it gets uncomfortable.