Am I still allowed to question climate change?

[Cyclone]

 

The concerns about the source code are merely that it looks untidy. It affects one piece of research, not the wealth of information available on the subject. What distrubs me about the emails is the way it exposes the denial industry and the personal attacks on scientists that now have got to the level of stealing their emails. Emails that show them to be under horrendous political pressure from a sceptics, that show their integrity in the face of that pressure (despite the occassional ill chosen words) and that there is no conspiracy.

 

Err, no.

It's badly written to the point that a cursory analysis shows it to be full of bugs. Which makes one suspect that it's results are invalid.

It also contains numerous comments about adjusting and fudging data.

 

Integrity - their intent to subvert the peer review process and to apply to tricks to data, their stated intention to bury anomalous periods of history when their models can't even match the past. They've about as much integrity as Gordon Brown.

[Cyclone]

How does it? The researcher that investigated the impact of black soot in the Himalayas doesn't say that, in fact he says the opposite. What brings you to that conclusion?

I'll try to keep this simple.

We have a limited amount of resource to dedicate to minimising any potential climate change.

 

If we can remove most soot from the air in the space of 15 years and at the cost of 100 billion dollars (for the sake of argument) or lower CO2 to pre-industrial levels in 100 years at the cost of 10 trillion dollars, then I'd think that it was pretty obvious which approach should be considered first.

 

If soot is contributing 50% of the warming effect, and is easily and cheaply tackled (by comparison) then it's the obvious avenue to go down.

[I1L2T3]

Err, no.

It's badly written to the point that a cursory analysis shows it to be full of bugs.

 

It's just bad code. Where I work, in the real world, we develop complex decision making systems used to to drive payments (amongst other things). If our client wants to put through £100m of payments over a weekend we can't have the software imploding, not dealing with exceptions and errors, or erroneously dealing with boundary conditions. It has to work properly, every time and all the time. We've had a couple of computer science PhDs join over the years. We educate them on how do develop decent commercially-acceptable code

 

There's nothing that strikes the fear of god into me more than somebody programming who doesn't really know what they're doing. And from what I've seen a lot of the programming at CRU was done by people who don't really know what they're doing.

[Wildcat]

Err, no.

It's badly written to the point that a cursory analysis shows it to be full of bugs. Which makes one suspect that it's results are invalid.

It also contains numerous comments about adjusting and fudging data.

 

Integrity - their intent to subvert the peer review process and to apply to tricks to data, their stated intention to bury anomalous periods of history when their models can't even match the past. They've about as much integrity as Gordon Brown.

 

The 'tricks' and the fudging quoted on this thread in relation to code are around the exclusion of tree data after 1960, for the perfectly sensible reason that including them would be using them outside the range in which they correlate with temperatures. Had they not made those adjustments the output would have been invalid.

 

The subversion of the peer review process being discussed was of a paper published in a sceptical journal. Their concerns were fully justified, indeed half the editorial board of the sceptical journal resigned over the abuse of process.

 

They have expressed outrage at some of the actions of those that are trying to subvert the debate, something that in the circumstances reflects favourably on their attention to the science. Where a paper came up they could see was wrong they didn't prevent it being published or act against it in any other way than doing some research to show the paper was scientifically flawed.

Edited December 16, 2009 by Wildcat

[Wildcat]

I'll try to keep this simple.

We have a limited amount of resource to dedicate to minimising any potential climate change.

 

If we can remove most soot from the air in the space of 15 years and at the cost of 100 billion dollars (for the sake of argument) or lower CO2 to pre-industrial levels in 100 years at the cost of 10 trillion dollars, then I'd think that it was pretty obvious which approach should be considered first.

 

If soot is contributing 50% of the warming effect, and is easily and cheaply tackled (by comparison) then it's the obvious avenue to go down.

 

Firstly, the article doesn't say that soot contributes to 50% of the global warming effect. It says 50% of the effect in the Himalayas.

 

Secondly, the costs you have given to support your case are your own made up ones. Fossil fuel burning is already filtered for soot, filtering more out will cost more money and the technologies and progress towards them are talked about here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon#Technology_for_reducing_black_carbon_emissions

 

As the scientist in the article says, we should be looking at reducing both black carbon and C02 emissions.

[Greybeard]

Except that isn't what the article says.

 

As CRU has said alll along they cannot release the data because of confidentiality agreements from many Governments around the world.

 

It also says.... "What they have not yet publicly revealed is that under a confidentiality agreement between the Met Office and the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, a portion of the UK's own temperature measurements is only made available to "bona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes".

 

The Met Office claim they're keeping the data secret so they can sell it for the benefit of the tax-payer. A likely tale

[Cyclone]

I said that they were made up, that was no secret.

It's also no secret that CO2 sequesterisation is extremely difficult and expensive, whilst filtering soot from exhausts and from cooking is easy and cheap.

 

If it contributes 50% in the himalayas, and soot is uniformly distributed, then it contributes 50% everywhere.

 

We aren't though, we are only looking at CO2. We aren't even looking at the far more potent Methane...

[Cyclone]

The 'tricks' and the fudging quoted on this thread in relation to code are around the exclusion of tree data after 1960, for the perfectly sensible reason that including them would be using them outside the range in which they correlate with temperatures. Had they not made those adjustments the output would have been invalid.

No, they aren't, in the code they are a wholesale manipulation of the entered data for given periods of time.

 

The subversion of the peer review process being discussed was of a paper published in a sceptical journal. Their concerns were fully justified, indeed half the editorial board of the sceptical journal resigned over the abuse of process.

That's not how I read it.

 

They have expressed outrage at some of the actions of those that are trying to subvert the debate, something that in the circumstances reflects favourably on their attention to the science. Where a paper came up they could see was wrong they didn't prevent it being published or act against it in any other way than doing some research to show the paper was scientifically flawed.

They have tried to subvert and stifle the debate themselves, they are only outraged when someone else tries to do it back to them.

They deliberately took steps to stop papers ever being published.

[Wildcat]

I said that they were made up, that was no secret.

It's also no secret that CO2 sequesterisation is extremely difficult and expensive, whilst filtering soot from exhausts and from cooking is easy and cheap.

 

If it contributes 50% in the himalayas, and soot is uniformly distributed, then it contributes 50% everywhere.

 

We aren't though, we are only looking at CO2. We aren't even looking at the far more potent Methane...

 

Filtering Soot as you can see from my link is the subject of ongoing research and developments and is far from cheap and simple.

 

It doesn't follow that 50% in the Himalayas means 50% everywhere. The Claim is that it contributes 25%.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon#Black_carbons_effect_on_Arctic_ice_and_Himalayan_glaciers

 

Errr my Link said otherwise, work is going on to tackle global warming on all fronts.

[Wildcat]

No, they aren't, in the code they are a wholesale manipulation of the entered data for given periods of time.

That's not how I read it.

They have tried to subvert and stifle the debate themselves, they are only outraged when someone else tries to do it back to them.

They deliberately took steps to stop papers ever being published.

 

I have seen no evidence of wholesale manipulation of data. And even if there was it just discredits one bit of research not all the other research from other establishments that supports the same human influenced rise in temperature. CRU is just one of many research establishments that have come to the same conclusion.

 

There is no evidence they took any steps to stop papers being published. Your view of the emails has come from hysterical bloggers with an agenda, not an impartial assessment of their evidence.