Climategate thread

[Sheilbh]

Tom Friedman from NYT is on the same bandwagon.

....Then I'll have to reconsider

[viper37]

Contiuing to steal from Paradox OT, here is the article of some Dr David Evans who was supposedly a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005:

Do you know who this guy is, really?
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans

[Admiral Yi]

Do you know who this guy is, really?
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans

I still don't know who this guy is, really.

[grumbler]

We have, however a valid theory based on science a couple of centuries old that different scientific teams in different countries choosing different datasets finds explains their different but consistent results.

No we don't, and that is one of the big problems for the climate scientists (which the evolutionary scientists don't suffer from, and pretending otherwise isn't on): there is no theory for global climate change.  Not in the scientific sense.  There are several hypotheses, but no theory ("valid" or otherwise) that produces testable predictions about global climate change.  There simply isn't enough evidence.

This isn't to say that there isn't a general scientific consensus that man-made pollution is causing climate change, nor that the opponents of this consensus do not have, at this point, the burden of proof, but the "science" on global climate change is more like the science on gravity than it is like that on evolution.

[grumbler]

Contiuing to steal from Paradox OT, here is the article of some Dr David Evans who was supposedly a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005:

Do you know who this guy is, really?
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans

That could have been written by a Languishite.  "Rocket science" in common parlance is only the science of designing rockets?  Really?

I agree that Evans isn't particularly credible, but my problem isn't with his use of the vernacular term "rocket scientist!"

[grumbler]

Do you know who this guy is, really?
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans

I still don't know who this guy is, really.

He is an Aussie who is attempting to trade on the fact that he worked on a model to account for CO2 sequestration to make his pronouncements on GCC sound more credible than they are.

He isn't really a scientist at all.  He is an engineer, and should stick to pronouncements on the use of cinder block in electrical circuitry.

[Tonitrus]

Meh, all this "controversy" will do is entrench the vitriolic radicals on both side, while the great middle mass  will forget it ever happened inside a month.

[Admiral Yi]

Meh, all this "controversy" will do is entrench the vitriolic radicals on both side, while the great middle mass  will forget it ever happened inside a month.

The great unwashed masses will remember very quickly once we get into real emissions caps.

[Maximus]

I have nothing to add other than to say I doubt anyone with average or better intelligence would use the word "climategate"

[derspiess]

Here's a very dry op-ed piece, but I thought it was pertinent to the thread.  It was in today's WSJ but also appears here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11072

[derspiess]

I have nothing to add other than to say I doubt anyone with average or better intelligence would use the word "climategate"

Good point.  What should we call it?

[alfred russel]

Here's a very dry op-ed piece, but I thought it was pertinent to the thread.  It was in today's WSJ but also appears here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11072

So based on leaked emails from one university, we know "climate change" is a decades long consipiracy based on manipulated data?

[Tonitrus]

Meh, all this "controversy" will do is entrench the vitriolic radicals on both side, while the great middle mass  will forget it ever happened inside a month.

The great unwashed masses will remember very quickly once we get into real emissions caps.

From what I have read, we'll have run out of oil by then, and society will have collapsed into a Mad Max-world.

[grumbler]

So based on leaked emails from one university, we know "climate change" is a decades long consipiracy based on manipulated data?

We "know" that scientists conspired to have people who disagreed with them ousted from editorial positions in some peer-reviewed journals.  We know that the data was manipulated (as is almost all published scientific data) but also that at least one of the scientists who published such work threatened to stop seeking publication if he had to provide the raw data from which he derived the manipulated (aka useful) data.

Again, what this shows is that scientists are human... human enough to try to stop the publication of inconvenient truths.  This should not be news.  I don't think that it can account for the degree to which climate scientists have concurred with the idea of human-based climate change, though.  After all, if this was a conspiracy, it was secret, right?  Secrets don't create wide-spread consensus.

[Tamas]

So based on leaked emails from one university, we know "climate change" is a decades long consipiracy based on manipulated data?

We "know" that scientists conspired to have people who disagreed with them ousted from editorial positions in some peer-reviewed journals.  We know that the data was manipulated (as is almost all published scientific data) but also that at least one of the scientists who published such work threatened to stop seeking publication if he had to provide the raw data from which he derived the manipulated (aka useful) data.

Again, what this shows is that scientists are human... human enough to try to stop the publication of inconvenient truths.  This should not be news.  I don't think that it can account for the degree to which climate scientists have concurred with the idea of human-based climate change, though.  After all, if this was a conspiracy, it was secret, right?  Secrets don't create wide-spread consensus.

Conspiracy is too strong a word. I am fairly certain that what happens with these manipulated climate data, happens with mostly everything in science, probably up to the lets-try-and-silence-opposition part. As you said, science folks are human to. And they are nerds as well which has to make their intrique all the worse.

However, there are a few key unique aspects of this field. First of all, that unlike, say, the field of studying birds' mating habits, what these guys declare has VAST economical, political, and social consequences.

As for the term climategate, it is how the whole issue is referenced around the interwebs, so I thought it would do for the thread.

Oh and I read that the stuff they signed in Denmark includes a cap of maximum 2C warming allowed from pre-industrial levels. So cute. 
I think they will have to sue Mother Earth if it turns out the average temperature fluctuates even without human influence  (which we know it does)