Am I still allowed to question climate change?

[happyhippy]

Can anyone tell me how asking people to use fewer finite resources and renewable/sustainable energy costs people more?

 

Use less energy, your bills decrease. Use less petrol, or at least share, you collective cost reduces. Is it really just me?

[Greybeard]

The capital costs of 'renewable' energy have to be met by someone. The energy companies have said they can't meet all the costs and continue to make a profit so a significant proportion will have to be passed on to the consumer in increased bills.

 

The govt. appear to have accepted this in principle and have warned that the cost of implementing a 'renewable' energy policy could amount to an additional and ongoing increase of £300 on average annual fuel bills.

[Greybeard]

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails...

 

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece

 

Says it all for me. And Gordon Brown wants we 'flat earthers' to believe it's about science and not money driven politics.

 

Climate change is happening - no doubt about that.

 

Is it driven by AGW ? - lots of doubt about that. Let's have the facts and the methods of arriving at those facts out in the open, not secreted away in some university archive with much of the raw data gone 'missing'.

[Cyclone]

The global temperature analysis is robust and the work of the UEA Climatic Research Unit, on the land component, is fully supported by two separate independent analyses in the US at Nasa and Noaa. The evidence for climate change over the past 100 years also comes from observed changes in retreating glaciers throughout most of the world, a decline in Arctic sea ice, melting of the Greenland ice sheet, changes in precipitation patterns, and changes in vegetation and the behaviour of wildlife.

Nasa apply a 'fudge' modification as well, that's quite widely documented. They have also been caught out gaming the data several times (which means they've probably not been caught out quite a few more times).

 

All three analyses of global temperature have been thoroughly and independently assessed by the IPCC, which is one of the most rigorous scientific review bodies in existence.

The IPCC is not a scientific review body at all, it uses, not assesses the reports that it is given.

Many thousands of scientists have dedicated their time to preparing and reviewing the most comprehensive and authoritative assessments of climate science available. In addition, governments from around the world have also reviewed the IPCC findings and, by consensus, approved the key findings in the summaries for policymakers and synthesis reports.

Approval by people 2 steps removed from the data who have no capability to approve or disprove such an analysis is meaningless.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/04/climate-change-uea-email

 

The CIA killed Kennedy, the American government blew up the twin towers, the moon landings were faked, Jesus really existed, Area 51 houses UFO's kept secret since the 1950's by the US government, Princess Diana was murdered on the orders of Prince Phillip, and man made global warming is a conspiracy to increase research grants to the sciences.

 

It's not a conspiracy, it's a bunch of misguided scientists who for reasons best known to themselves have an agenda to prove. Maybe their academic careers have rested for the past decade on not being proven to be comprehensively wrong, or maybe they decided that scientists should be doing a bit of social engineering as they are smarter than politicians. Either way, they've now been caught out.

[Cyclone]

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails...

 

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece

 

Says it all for me. And Gordon Brown wants we 'flat earthers' to believe it's about science and not money driven politics.

 

Climate change is happening - no doubt about that.

 

Is it driven by AGW ? - lots of doubt about that. Let's have the facts and the methods of arriving at those facts out in the open, not secreted away in some university archive with much of the raw data gone 'missing'.

 

Is climate change on a scale that actually threatens us happening at all?

We've had variations throughout our (brief) recorded history, and bigger ones before that (in the span of humans existence). We're still here.

[Wildcat]

Is climate change on a scale that actually threatens us happening at all?

We've had variations throughout our (brief) recorded history, and bigger ones before that (in the span of humans existence). We're still here.

 

There has never before been the rise in temperatures recorded in the last century.

 

The impact... perhaps the creation of 10s of millions of climate change migrants, due to the loss of low lieing areas is not so bad.

 

I am sure we can take a few million bangladeshi immigrants and we will be all the better for it.

[Sausage Dog]

The thing I don't understand about this debate is that, assuming that climate changes isn't man made (I think man is contributing, BTW), why wouldn't we want to use less oil/gas anyway?

 

It's going to run out at some point. So rather than wasting it on pointless air journeys, and plastic products we don't need, why not just accept that it makes sense to use resources more sensibly?

[Dick]

To calculate teperatures hundreds of years ago using data from tree rings, their compactness or otherwise etc, Anglia university were using a particular statistical analysis.

Unfortunately someone pointed out that applying this analysis to modern data when they had accurate temperature records to compare, the predicted temperatures didn't agree with the actual temperatures.

To make them agree they applied a fudge factor, which had the effect of making the temperature increase seem greater than it actually was, or even made a decrease seem to be an increase.

[truman]

To calculate teperatures hundreds of years ago using data from tree rings, their compactness or otherwise etc, Anglia university were using a particular statistical analysis.

Unfortunately someone pointed out that applying this analysis to modern data when they had accurate temperature records to compare, the predicted temperatures didn't agree with the actual temperatures.

To make them agree they applied a fudge factor, which had the effect of making the temperature increase seem greater than it actually was, or even made a decrease seem to be an increase.

 

You mean "Hide the Decline" ? This is where the tree ring data showed am temperature increase to 1960 but a decrease from then on,so they fudged it...

[spindrift]

The UEA response, in it's entirely:

 

"The publication of a selection of the emails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others. There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation. CRU’s peer-reviewed publications are consistent with, and have contributed to, the overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate is being strongly influenced by human activity. The interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice mean that the strongly-increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere do not produce a uniform year-on-year increase in global temperature. On time-scales of 5-10 years, however, there is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will continue to warm, with attendant changes in the climate, for the foreseeable future. It is important, for all countries, that this warming is slowed down, through substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the most dangerous impacts of climate change. Respected international research groups, using other data sets, have come to the same conclusion.

 

The University of East Anglia and CRU are committed to scientific integrity, open debate and enhancing understanding. This includes a commitment to the international peer-review system upon which progress in science relies. It is this tried and tested system which has underpinned the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is through that process that we can engage in respectful and informed debate with scientists whose analyses appear not to be consistent with the current overwhelming consensus on climate change

 

The publication of a selection of stolen data is the latest example of a sustained and, in some instances, a vexatious campaign which may have been designed to distract from reasoned debate about the nature of the urgent action which world governments must consider to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. We are committed to furthering this debate despite being faced with difficult circumstances related to a criminal breach of our security systems and our concern to protect colleagues from the more extreme behaviour of some who have responded in irrational and unpleasant ways to the publication of personal information.

 

There has been understandable interest in the progress and outcome of the numerous requests under information legislation for large numbers of the data series held by CRU. The University takes its responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Environmental Information Regulations 2004, and the Data Protection Act 1998 very seriously and has, in all cases, handled and responded to requests in accordance with its obligations under each particular piece of legislation. Where appropriate, we have consulted with the Information Commissioners Office and have followed their advice.

 

In relation to the specific requests at issue here, we have handled and responded to each request in a consistent manner in compliance with the appropriate legislation. No record has been deleted, altered, or otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure of all, or any part, of the requested information. Where information has not been disclosed, we have done so in accordance with the provisions of the relevant legislation and have so informed the requester.

 

The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.

 

Given the degree to which we collaborate with other organisations around the world, there is also an understandable interest in the computer security systems we have in place in CRU and UEA. Although we were confident that our systems were appropriate, experience has shown that determined and skilled people, who are prepared to engage in criminal activity, can sometimes hack into apparently secure systems. Highly-protected government organisations around the world have also learned this to their cost.

 

We have, therefore, decided to conduct an independent review, which will address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed.

 

Statement from Professor Phil Jones, Head of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia."