Eat that GW believers!

[ndelta]

I didn't really want to inject myself into this discussion, but I have been trying to read up on climate change research so that I can come up with an informed opinion. I noticed that a paper on surface stations was mentioned in this thread.

Third, even the surface instrumental record is suspect, since only 4% of the USHCN climate network even meets their own guidelines for siting and maintenance. http://www.surfacestations.org If 96% of the "Cadillac of Climate Networks" is off by 1 degree C or more, I fail to see how you can hope to tease a 0.5 degree change out the data with any kind of certainty.

I came across this video that seems to refute those conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcxVwEfq4bM

Can anyone tell me why that video is wrong?

[Betruger]

Its so hilarious how people try to pretend global warming isn't occurring, and/or politicize the issue to promote their personal political agenda.

Here is a clue for you guys: why are the glaciers and other large formations of ice melting away so very rapidly? Because temperatures are falling, or staying the same? (rolls eyes)

You can post all the theories you want that claim to refute global warming, but until the ice stops melting LONG TERM, and recovers its former mass, you really don't have much of a case to make. The undeniable evidence proves your anti-global warming BS as just that, BS.

And then you do the exact mirror political thing.

Why just Greenland? I've avoided getting into climate change like the plague because the science is so displaced by politics and other ludicrous biasing pet peeves, but allow me a simple outsider question - Why just Greenland and not the whole planet? Why is that one location singled out as indicative of everything else?
If everything about GW deniers as you call em is so wrong, why don't you concisely point out clear absolute (assuming that's why you say it with such certainty) evidence for each point made here? Instead of drive-by ridicule.

No, I didn't do "the exact mirror political thing". I simply pointed out that MANY people adopt a point of view about global warming that is based on their politics, and not on science. Notice how I didn't say which political party has made a point of denying science, and which political party hasn't.

Here is more evidence that global warming is actually occurring, despite all the deniers:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 121611.htm

Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across US

I didn't say anything about proper political parties. I said it was nowadays more about GWists versus anti-warmists in an entrenched and politicized fashion just as in proper politics. You didn't simply point out GW POVs based on national politics, nor just that there's "MANY people" who subscribe to anti-gw in the sense that there's many of em but called all of those right here on this forum not on your (global warmist) "party" as deniers (already halfway to assuming global warming is absolutely a foregone conclusion, which is a method you're supposed to denounce) and reduced their science, however mistaken it might be, to "BS".

From my outsider perspective this is just the type of attitude that pushes climate change discussions from productive debate to food fight between cliques.

[flying_eagle]

Good thing the President gets it as he spoke in Japan Nov 14,2009

"Working in partnership, this is how we can sustain this recovery and advance our common prosperity. But it's not enough to pursue growth that is balanced. We also need growth that is sustainable -- for our planet and the future generations that will live here.

Already, the United States has taken more steps to combat climate change in 10 months than we have in our recent history -- (applause) -- by embracing the latest science, by investing in new energy, by raising efficiency standards, forging new partnerships, and engaging in international climate negotiations. In short, America knows there is more work to do -- but we are meeting our responsibility, and will continue to do so.

And that includes striving for success in Copenhagen. I have no illusions that this will be easy, but the contours of a way forward are clear. All nations must accept their responsibility. Those nations, like my own, who have been the leading emitters must have clear reduction targets. Developing countries will need to take substantial actions to curb their emissions, aided by finance and technology. And there must be transparency and accountability for domestic actions.

Each of us must do what we can to grow our economies without endangering our planet -- and we must do it together. But the good news is that if we put the right rules and incentives in place, it will unleash the creative power of our best scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. It will lead to new jobs, new businesses, and entire new industries. And Japan has been at the forefront on this issue. We are looking forward to being a important partner with you as we achieve this critical global goal."

[MSimon]

Actually, the denial of man's influence on global climate change stems largely from a religious perspective on the right.

Well then a TOEP (Theory of Everything Political).

Except I am not of an identifiable religious persuasion.

And I changed my mind after studying the matter. And surfacestations.org.

As to man's influence on climate? Well I know one thing for sure. Man has reduced the number of spots on the sun with CO2 emissions. The same emissions that are causing warming on Mars and several other planets. And the gas is so crazy making that some Russian scientists are predicting a little ice age from reduced solar output. And every one knows that tiny changes in solar output are insignificant compared to CO2. Unless Svensmark is correct.

We have to stop all this CO2 emitting before it destroys the solar system. And makes every one on Earth insane.

Me? I think emitting Tree Food is a good idea.

[MSimon]

Already, the United States has taken more steps to combat climate change in 10 months than we have in our recent history -- (applause) -- by embracing the latest science, by investing in new energy, by raising efficiency standards, forging new partnerships, and engaging in international climate negotiations.

Ah. A hopium addict.

China already surpasses USA's CO2 output and is expected to double current production by 2020. USA CO2 output has been relatively flat by comparisin.

BTW the capital to crate a job in the USA runs about $150,000. So every $150,000 we pay for "Green Energy" above the price of other resources kills a job. If we subsidize "Green Energy" by $150 million we can kill 1,000 jobs. For only $1.5 billion in subsidy we can kill 10,000 jobs. If we can get that up to $15 bn we can kill 100,000 jobs directly. And if we go all out and subsidize Green Energy to the tune of $150 bn we can kill a million jobs.

Europe found this out. Which is why Spain and Germany have cut the $Green subsidies.

I'm all for embracing the latest science. How about making the Climate models conform to ERBE measurements? That would be a start.

[TallDave]

Actually, the denial of man's influence on global climate change stems largely from a religious perspective on the right. To that group, only their invisible man in the sky has the power to alter or change things on a global scale.

Actually, the belief in man's alleged influence on global climate stems largely from a religious perspective on the left. To that group pretty much anything Man is doing must be harmful to Mother Nature. That's why most of the AGWers (who are only 36% of the country as of the last poll) are also against nuclear energy. It's a religion; it doesn't have to make any kind of sense.

You can post all the veiled insults you want, act like I belong to a cult, that I think like an aborigine, or whatever else get you off.

Correlation isn't causation; cargo cults are built around that mistake. The aborigines eventually figured that out.

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

To spend trillions of dollars chasing a problem for which there is no good scientific evidence is the modern equivalent of a cargo cult. It's an enormous and unconscionable waste of resources. It makes everyone poorer.

The science is very, very bad, as has been proven in the thread. Like any religion, the whole thing proceeds largely on unquestioning faith.

Its called an ad hominem attack,

A righteous call to avoid ad hominems is a little more effective when it isn't deployed right after a series of ad hominems. Your first post called skeptics "deniers," connoting Holocaust denial, and questioned their motives. You then claimed many were driven by a religious delusion. Logically, you can't then complain when others respond in kind.

[TallDave]

I didn't really want to inject myself into this discussion, but I have been trying to read up on climate change research so that I can come up with an informed opinion. I noticed that a paper on surface stations was mentioned in this thread.

Third, even the surface instrumental record is suspect, since only 4% of the USHCN climate network even meets their own guidelines for siting and maintenance. http://www.surfacestations.org If 96% of the "Cadillac of Climate Networks" is off by 1 degree C or more, I fail to see how you can hope to tease a 0.5 degree change out the data with any kind of certainty.

I came across this video that seems to refute those conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcxVwEfq4bM

Can anyone tell me why that video is wrong?

Yes, this was covered a while back.

Once you get past all the finger-pointing of "Aha! They're funded by eeeevil conservative groups!" which is pretty rich coming from the crowd that gets billions from taxpayers only as long as they can keep people scared, you find out someone did a study of temperatures using the good stations as identified by the SurfaceStations project, and found they were pretty much the same as the GISS data.

The problem is, the new study doesn't use the raw data. They use the "homogenized" data, which means all the bad stations are already averaged in. So the study basically says GISS as a whole agrees with GISS as a whole. Welcome to three-card monte, AGW style.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/29/m ... ints-memo/

It gets worse. The man in charge of the GISS data is one James Hansen. Hansen gets arrested at power plants, compared coal trains to Auschwitz, and called for AGW critics to be tried for war crimes. He is about the farthest thing from an objective scientist you can find in a lab coat. He runs all kinds of "correcting" algorithms which mysteriously create warming in the data. (And no, you can't see the algorithms.)

This is not good science. This is especially bad when you are asking for policies that will cost trillions of dollars.

[flying_eagle]

BTW the capital to crate a job in the USA runs about $150,000. So every $150,000 we pay for "Green Energy" above the price of other resources kills a job. If we subsidize "Green Energy" by $150 million we can kill 1,000 jobs. For only $1.5 billion in subsidy we can kill 10,000 jobs. If we can get that up to $15 bn we can kill 100,000 jobs directly. And if we go all out and subsidize Green Energy to the tune of $150 bn we can kill a million jobs.

Europe found this out. Which is why Spain and Germany have cut the $Green subsidies.

Name one job that is at stake for investing?
Let's see http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/in ... nvestment/ doesn't think so. They wanted a stimulus.
Many trade complaints have been on industrial subsidies from other countries governments as being unfair. Yes lets be really honest, the argument that job killer is misrepresented as it can not be argued that investing money kills jobs by your own definition of 150k per job. The reality is that new jobs will be created. In fact, it is the lack of regulation and CEO wall street based bonuses that has driven jobs from the USA long before anyone talked of Green jobs. I watched while the Republicans had control of Congress and the Whitehouse for the last 8 years that more jobs went to India and Mexico than during any other time. I got off a plane in Pune, India and was surrounded by dozens and dozens of Indians holding up signs that read Microsoft, Infosys, Shell oil, John Deere,(mostly American companies) etc as taxis were looking for the company people to escort them to their new India facilities. I'm personally happy for the India folks, but many people in America were not so happy at losing their jobs. I watched 22 of 24 of my co-workers replaced by talent in India and then whole departments like customers service shutdown in the USA for other countries to host them. Lets be real about what is really going on here. Job loss has nothing to do with Green anything and is more systemic of what we have allowed to happen in a corporate rules the country attitude. My friends you are just as vunerable and responsible for letting this happen as any one else unless you were supported organized labor. I was not a supporter and guess what, I loss my unionless job also. I'm not saying union is the answer, but giving corporations everything, all the power, is not the answer either. Some other countries have done much better than we have on this and that includes healthcare as well.

[MSimon]

Name one job that is at stake for investing?

That very statement is evidence of your complete ignorance of economics.

It is pointless to discuss how paying more for things costs jobs. But I'm willing to work with the ill educated so I will try.

1. There is a company of 10 people in competition with a Chinese Company.
2. The salary paid to each worker is $40,000 a year.
3. To pay for green energy taxes go up $10,000 a year on the company
4. To pay for green energy the cost of energy goes up $10,000 a year.
5. The company can't raise prices because it is in competition with China.
6. The company can't lower salaries because it competes for workers

How do you fix the problem?

1. Fire one worker and make the rest work harder. The boss pockets $10,000 and distributes the other $10,000 to the workers.

2. Fire two workers (to cover the business losses and increased overhead burden for the remaining employees from the first worker fired) and keep salaries the same. The company does less business and thus pays less in taxes. China increases its market share.

3. The boss gets irrational decides he has had it with government mandates, rising energy costs, and rising taxes, sells his customer list to the Chinese and retires on his savings.

You can't raise costs without decreasing output. Reduced output means lower tax collections.

So how do you break such a cycle? Make Green Energy profitable without subsidies. Then you don't need a government mandate. Greed (normal in humans) takes over. And of course with rising profits tax collections increase.

One only need look at the illegal drug market to see what people are willing to do for a profit. The desire for profit is unquenchable.

I find that the vast majority proposing huge subsidies for green energy are economic illiterates. The Germans and Spanish know better. And they are more socialist than America is. In fact Socialist Spain reduced corporate taxes to attract business. If only our politicians were as smart.

[flying_eagle]

Name one job that is at stake for investing?

That very statement is evidence of your complete ignorance of economics.

It is pointless to discuss how paying more for things costs jobs. But I'm willing to work with the ill educated so I will try.

1. There is a company of 10 people in competition with a Chinese Company.
2. The salary paid to each worker is $40,000 a year.
3. To pay for green energy taxes go up $10,000 a year on the company
4. To pay for green energy the cost of energy goes up $10,000 a year.
5. The company can't raise prices because it is in competition with China.
6. The company can't lower salaries because it competes for workers

How do you fix the problem?

1. Fire one worker and make the rest work harder. The boss pockets $10,000 and distributes the other $10,000 to the workers.

2. Fire two workers (to cover the business losses and increased overhead burden for the remaining employees from the first worker fired) and keep salaries the same. The company does less business and thus pays less in taxes. China increases its market share.

3. The boss gets irrational decides he has had it with government mandates, rising energy costs, and rising taxes, sells his customer list to the Chinese and retires on his savings.

You can't raise costs without decreasing output. Reduced output means lower tax collections.

So how do you break such a cycle? Make Green Energy profitable without subsidies. Then you don't need a government mandate. Greed (normal in humans) takes over. And of course with rising profits tax collections increase.

One only need look at the illegal drug market to see what people are willing to do for a profit. The desire for profit is unquenchable.

I find that the vast majority proposing huge subsidies for green energy are economic illiterates. The Germans and Spanish know better. And they are more socialist than America is. In fact Socialist Spain reduced corporate taxes to attract business. If only our politicians were as smart.

Yes, you couldn't name a job where investing money into it caused it to lose employees. Instead you set up a straw man with too many assumptions. All of which are not guaranteed. For example you didn't say why their energy costs went up. Did they consider energy efficiency or government subsidized capital improvements? Also you didn't indicate if they received any subsidy (my point is they received investment). Instead I give you money to make green widgets and hire people. You claim the investment it didn't create a job. What you may be failing to see is that other companies not directly tied to green widget also get collateral business from it. GM and Delco. Investing is as simple as it gets. If you would have read the link I gave: "In contrast to an infrastructure spending program, the report notes that competing stimulus proposals, such as tax cuts, would create, at best, only 14,000 jobs per $1 billion in spending. This means 22 percent less jobs would result from a tax-based stimulus than from infrastructure spending. This is primarily because households spend a greater share of their income on imports."
You don't seem to be an economist either.

[MSimon]

fe,

Sorry about your job loss. Maybe you will get on the lower taxes and less regulation bandwagon to give American companies a better environment to compete. And dude - be careful about that union thing. Think about Government Motors and Crisis Motors.

Or you could figure out more ways to raise company expenses and drive more jobs offshore. I'm aways amused at folks who work hard to cut their own throats and then complain that getting your personal throat cut hurts. It was supposed to be the other guy who got his throat cut. The fat cats.

But think of it positively. You did your part for the greening of America.

Reminds me of a Russian Joke.

Genie: I will give you one request; anything you want. I will give your neighbor twice what I give you.
Peasant: Poke one of my eyes out.

Me? I would ask for a pile of gold and enjoy my neighbors good fortune.

So what would be the equivalent for you? Do everything in your power to increase corporate profit. Including stumping for lower corporate taxes. Less regulation. Simpler rules for hiring and firing.

Your punish business attitude is only punishing yourself.

[ndelta]

Once you get past all the finger-pointing of "Aha! They're funded by eeeevil conservative groups!" which is pretty rich coming from the crowd that gets billions from taxpayers only as long as they can keep people scared, you find out someone did a study of temperatures using the good stations as identified by the SurfaceStations project, and found they were pretty much the same as the GISS data.

The problem is, the new study doesn't use the raw data. They use the "homogenized" data, which means all the bad stations are already averaged in. So the study basically says GISS as a whole agrees with GISS as a whole. Welcome to three-card monte, AGW style.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/29/m ... ints-memo/

It gets worse. The man in charge of the GISS data is one James Hansen. Hansen gets arrested at power plants, compared coal trains to Auschwitz, and called for AGW critics to be tried for war crimes. He is about the farthest thing from an objective scientist you can find in a lab coat. He runs all kinds of "correcting" algorithms which mysteriously create warming in the data. (And no, you can't see the algorithms.)

This is not good science. This is especially bad when you are asking for policies that will cost trillions of dollars.

This is a good example of how laymen like myself can become so confused about this issue. I hear one point of view on that video which does say that the report in question was funded by a conservative think tank. Then it tries to emotionally manipulate me into thinking that his position about this topic is correct. (The Heartland Land Institute also advocates for the tobacco industry and they're bad so you can trust me!)

I then come here and get the same only from a reversed point of view. (Sure this was funded by a conservative group, but it is hypocritical for him to point that out and the person in charge of that data is a bad man so why believe him?)

So here is what I am getting out of this and I may be wrong.

One side says that: Yes, not all of these stations conform to the guidelines that we set, but it doesn't matter because we correct for that and the corrected data is what we then infer from. Here is a graph that shows this "corrected" data from our method overlayed with the data using only the stations that you say should be correct. They are basically the same. Also we have a new reference network now that doesn't rely on any of these stations.

The other side says: That study shouldn't count because you compared only the good stations data with your "corrected" data using a method that I cannot see or check for accuracy. You should use all of the stations good and bad. Also, if you "correct" the data, I want to know how.

Is this a correct assessment of the arguments on both sides about this issue? (Minus some bullshit.)
If not then correct me.

[MSimon]

The tobacco industry is unfairly maligned:

Schizophrenia and Tobacco

I have a relative who is schizophrenic and the taxes are literally killing him. When he is short of tobacco he is worse. There is a war on schizophrenics going on but you have to be in the know to see it.

I don't know why people have such intense desires to meddle in affairs of which they have only the most cursory and popular knowledge.

[MSimon]

One side says that: Yes, not all of these stations conform to the guidelines that we set, but it doesn't matter because we correct for that and the corrected data is what we then infer from. Here is a graph that shows this "corrected" data from our method overlayed with the data using only the stations that you say should be correct. They are basically the same. Also we have a new reference network now that doesn't rely on any of these stations.

You have to look into it to see how the trick is done: ask yourself:

Can a weather station at 3,000 ft in a meadow correct for a weather station at 8,000 ft on the side of a mountain three hundred miles away? One site is mostly cloudy. One site is mostly sunny.

How about the center of a city of 3 million vs a measuring station in a cow pasture?

What is the correction for an air conditioner 10ft from the measuring station? How does it vary with wind speed, direction, and time of day and outdoor temperature and indoor temp setting of the AC unit? Now how about 15ft? 20ft? Center of the building. On a corner? On a side. On the opposite side? Has any one even done the experiment?

Care to tell me what the proper algorithm is? Heck just give me the parameters to correct for as a starting point. Can I treat the whole thing as a distribution? Or do I have to look at every pair as a separate case? What kinds of errors are the methods likely to introduce?

That is the trick. They take a hugely complex problem. Simplify it beyond recognition. ASSIGN parameters and methods that can be manipulated to get a desirable result. And this of course is counted as science.

No. It is not. It is wearing lab coats and doing a lot of complex math and jiggering with computers and calling it science. Cargo cult science.

Except this cargo cult really works. Al Gore is getting rich and people who might be reduced to doing quality control statistics on a widget line all have prestigious government jobs. A pretty good trick if you can pull it off.

Eventually the marks wise up.

[IntLibber]

I didn't really want to inject myself into this discussion, but I have been trying to read up on climate change research so that I can come up with an informed opinion. I noticed that a paper on surface stations was mentioned in this thread.

Third, even the surface instrumental record is suspect, since only 4% of the USHCN climate network even meets their own guidelines for siting and maintenance. http://www.surfacestations.org If 96% of the "Cadillac of Climate Networks" is off by 1 degree C or more, I fail to see how you can hope to tease a 0.5 degree change out the data with any kind of certainty.

I came across this video that seems to refute those conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcxVwEfq4bM

Can anyone tell me why that video is wrong?

Yes I can. Firstly, he wrongly claims that surfacestations.org judged the surface stations by their own opinions. This is false, they were judged by objective measurement and observation comparison to NOAA's own siting standards. The ratings are thus objectively based on NOAA's own rules.

Secondly the "debunking" published by NOAA in response to Watts' study does not show no difference between 'good' sites and 'poor' sites, what it did show was the degree to which the NOAA processes the raw data, altered to homogenize it all as much as possible. NOAA did not analyse the raw data from the sites, they compared the processed, homogenized data in which good sites temperature numbers are adjusted by other nearby sites.

Another big problem with surface station data outside of this comparison is that 90% of the surface stations in existence in 1990 are no longer there, or NOAA has simply stopped collecting the data from them. These 'dead' stations are predominantly in rural locations.

Furthermore, NOAA does NOT adjust stations for heat island effect. One example of this was the surface station at the Honolulu international airport this past summer, in which the thermometer was broken for a week setting new false high temperature records before publicity given it by Watts blog readers finally got NOAA to order it replaced. Yet NOAA let the faulty temperature records set by the broken thermometer to remain on the books, and they did not adjust the numbers down to account for urban heat island effects.

One thing found by surfacestations.org members is the large number of stations located at airports, and comparing airport stations against other stations shows a marked divergence which can only be explained that the stations warming trends actually record the growth of traffic at the airport and nothing else. Airport surface stations tend to stand near the end of runways, along taxiways and if traffic rises over time, the thermometer is more likely to be exposed to hot jet exhaust gasses for longer periods of time, recording false highs and skewing the record.

In fact, NOAA not only doesnt adjust for UHI, they have taken to depressing temperature records taken decades ago, particularly the 1930's when temperatures were actually warmer than now, while boosting temperatures recorded recently.

Beyond that, half the video isn't even about global warming, but an ad hominem attack on the group funding the publishing because of their past advocacy for tobacco, and trying to imply that Watts is being paid by industry. Fact is Watts is NOT paid by anybody to run his blog. Conversely, pro-AGW scientists receive over $70 million a year to do global warming research. How long do you think those funds would run if those scientists concluded there was no AGW?

"the Energy Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation -- provided nearly $66.5 million in funding for climate-change research from 2000 to 2002. That's more than half of the $112.1 million in climate-change money that was passed out by the top 20 private foundations during the three-year period."

In the same period, the USG distributed $2 billion to various universities.

Conversely, the only documented funding for skeptical groups is the George C Marshall Institute receiving $95,000 from the Exxon Education Foundation and $60,000 from the American Petroleum Institute. So, who is more paid off?