Al Gore Cancels

You are preaching to the choir. I never believed this junk from the start. I could use some global warming......its 28 here this am!

Have any of these "debunkings" addressed the issue of glacial retreat?

ckbvl- first of all, one of those sites that you quotes, the evolution in the news one is NOT a scientific one, on the front page it said they are scientists who are challenging the darwinian establishment- that itself tells me they are a separatist group that doesn't belong in the peer reviewed world of science journals...
Second, what the whole climategate exposed had to do with anthropogenic global warming...
That does NOT mean that global warming itself is false or made up. Global warming is very much real. Anthropogenic global warming theorists such as Al Gore are saying that the rise in CO2 in the air is causing climate change which isn't something that is fully accepted in science. I can send to anyone who asks a peer reviewed scholarly article that explains global warming without any political biases, but I can't post it here because it is for paid subscribers and I might get in trouble. Here is the link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/1.3192838

Actually, that is the basis for my question (though, no, I can't account for the accuracy of data collection and recording "millions of years" ago); apparently, this indeed has been a cyclical occurence; but as with every cyclical occurence, there is no guarantee of the cycle continuing. Whether global warming is legitimate, embellished, or fabricated, the fact is that the ecosystem is much different now than it once was, and there is information that suggests that retreat in certain areas of the world may be unusually extreme.

I'd like to take you up on that offer. I'm a PhD in the engineering sciences myself and have not only published peer-reviewed articles, I have reviewed articles submitted by others as well. I have a long-standing mistrust of the manner in which data in this field are collected and interpreted and I might add that I worked for 7-1/2 years at the GKSS research center mentioned in this article:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.c...n_id=&Issue_id

Mr Gore has no background whatsoever in environmental science / climatology and thus as far as I am concerned, I put anything he has to say about the enviroment inthe same bin as I put anything that people like Susan Sarandon or Linda Ronstadt have to say about politics.

I can email you the pdf, pm me if you want me to do that. I was going to send it to you but I realized I can't attach it to a PM ..
I know that Going Nova is in graduate school studying geology I believe, I am sure she could give a great explanation but I haven't seen her around in a while..
The article I had a link to just talks about correlation between CO2 and temperature increase and whether or not Al Gore and other anthropogenic theorists are wrong when they imply rise in CO2 is responsible for change in temperatures..
Why are you skeptical of research done in that field? Do you think the peer review process isn't working well?

Oops I thought I had enabled being able to receive email as well a PM but I guess I can't do that here. I'll PM you my email addy.

The reason I am skeptical of data and interpretation in this field is that the time scale over which changes are relevant is much greater than the time frame over which we humans have been able to make reliable measurements. How long have we been around and been recording temperature? And how long have we been recording it accurately? A couple hundred years? And when was the last ice age? Twenty-thousand years ago?

If they don't have real data (ie quantitative measurements) to base interpretation on, what are they using as input for their models? Theories of ice ages and warming periods? Evidence that such and such plants or animals existed at so-and so location at such and such time? Or that the geography of one or the other continent had a certain shape? This may sound a bit arrogant, but to me if your input data for your model isn't really data but instead you're using hypotheses and theories taken from other fields, there is a degree of fuzziness to it that I personally find unacceptable and I would not find it rewarding to work in that field.

I have no quarrel with the peer review process and I don't expect anyone in that field to have a definitive answer or be able to make a long term prediction based on the available DATA. These scientists are IMO out there getting the money to do the research, digging up whatever data or input for their models that they can find, submitting it for publication, and it's getting reviewed the same way that all papers for archival journals get reviewed. I believe that the scientists involved are looking for an objective truth, the problem comes when science meets media or politics. A statement in the summary along the lines of "The results suggest that the activity of human beings in industrialized nations may have a causal relationship with the trend in increasing temperature observed over the last century" in an archival journal becomes "Scientists scream alarm over man-made global warning" in Time magazine. And I personally consider making predictions based on using hypotheses useless. I consider weather to be a stochastic process and climate change even more so. These people are using numerical models and I have a basic mistrust of FEA etc because your result is only as good as your input data and assumptions. I'll take an analytical model any day over a numerical one because at least in my field, you can always find the swindle somewhere in an numerical model where someone has adjusted a parameter to make the result fit the observation. In climate science you don't even have a result because we have to wait several hundred years for a change that would be considered significant and not background noise. Maybe I don't understand enough about the field to make a judgment like this but as I said, the field has zero appeal to me whatsoever because of the reasons stated.

All I ever have to say about this is: I don't care if global warming is real or not, life is temporary - one day our sun with implode and then there really won't be anything left of the human race.

In the mean time I am so tired of seeing plastic bags blowing down the road side I don't care what we tell ourselves to stop throwing garbage around!!!

I really do believe we should live in harmony with nature, but I'm also not against modern life (*hugs computer*). It makes me feel good to compost and I do it for myself (and my garden!) not because someone told me it's going to save the planet.

I've thought for a while that the environmental movement is stupid for painting itself into a corner by focusing on carbon/global warming, to the almost total exclusion of all else. Aside from the fact that the scientific debate isn't really completely settled, even assuming that humans' addition to carbon dioxide amounts is causing global warming which will have all the described negative effects, if that's true, it's too big for any one community to do anything about it; anyone's benefit depends on what everyone does, and one reasonable reaction to this is "it doesn't matter so why bother?"

On the other hand, local communities could do something about things that are specific to their area, like toxins being released in manufacturing, pesticides leaching into groundwater, groundwater overuse, planting trees to increase air quality...things where people can benefit from their environment-helping actions. The funny thing about that is, if we could get people in most local communities to work on improving their local environments, that would most likely add up to reduced carbon impact too.

The idea that we are seeing a climate change is very likely true, although the crowd who screams that every hurricane or tornado or whatever weather phenomenon is because of "global warming" is not doing their cause any favors by raising the alarm at every drop of rain. Climate change takes at a minimum decades, and more likely a century or so to truly show itself as a true change.

But the true problem here is not whether or not climate change is actually happening. That science may well be fairly well agreed upon. The problem is that theorists about the cause of the climate change being man-made, or anthropogenic, have been stating that their "science" is fact in order to get the political and environmental changes that they want enacted. The "climate-gate" is actually about the cause of change, not the change itself.

The fact that Al Gore, who fancied himself a scientist and full-on know-it-all (after inventing the internet) after narrating a movie and getting a Nobel Prize on the same merits as Obama (IMO, so take that for what it's worth It's a valid comparison to me, it may not be to anyone else.), cancelled his appearance at Copenhagen is more telling about his "facts" are falling apart as to the cause of this "global warming" is more telling than the actual emails themselves.

Yes, that was my point that it is about the cause of change, I just wanted to make sure I correct the statement that global warming is a scam which bothered me...
It may be that climate change is not caused by greenhouse gases, but what bothers me is that politicians are jumping in to either strongly oppose that theory or to blow it out of proportion. It is so not their place. It is making me mad why this is even a political issue and both sides democrats and republicans are just inserting their opinions where they don't belong....I honestly think the emails that were uncovered, where scientists are sending frustrated emails about how they shouldn't publish in activist journals, etc- I feel like all of that is the result of the pressure that has been put on scientists by the media and by political groups. These scientists just aren't left alone to do their job, their job sadly depends on the political environment too, especially when it comes to the context of global warming which is such a controversial issue outside of science. (because within science there is no controversy on this, there are only theories and data to support or reject them). I realize it is their job to implement policies to conserve the environment, but it is not their place to say whether or not global warming is man made or not, that is the job of science to say.

I should add that I think this is all about religion in the end. In no other country is it possible for politicians to claim that science is false, only in America because only here, there are enough religious people to say to themselves "it is only god who can answer the question of when the earth will destroy itself", and decide there are no urgent problems because it isn't in the hands of humans...The rest of the western world is far more secular than the US, and people are using their logic rather than faith, and able to see that science has been successful in the past 200 years in so many areas, so it must be in our best interest to trust science...

There is no evidence whatsoever in the links you posted to indicate that scientists are "falsifying and fudging data." If you think that is true please post or quote something to support that statement as I have not seen any proof of that.

I think the problem isn't so much scientists as a whole, but rather the people who pick and chose which data to use and ignore depending on their particular agenda. What you then end up with are lies and half-truths.

Science isn't perfect. Geology is a young field compared to some of the other sciences but its history is filled with controversy. For a long time it was considered taboo to be a catastrophist thanks to people like Charles Lyell. It wasn't until the 1900s and especially the last quarter of the 20th Century that it became accepted that the KT event (asteroid impact) is what killed off the dinosaurs, but it isn't a universal belief in the field.

The very fact that someone somewhere has given it a sensationalized, headline-grabbing name like "Climategate" tells me that anything written under this heading should be taken with a grain of salt since it does not come from scientists.

I have been saying ALL ALONG for the past ten years that it wasn't that long ago that climate scientists were warning of an impending ice age so I have been rolling my eyes at the abrupt about face within my lifetime. And believe me I have taken my lumps from people (not scientists) on various forums for having the audacity to question global warming theories.

I do not see any of this as a deliberate attempt on the part of scientists to perpetuate something that is false. Heaven knows I was in the research game myself for most of my career so I claim to understand how it works. I do think that the field of climate science is "fuzzy" for the reasons I stated in an earlier post. From where I am sitting, the people doing research in this field are simply doing what scientists do, namely trying to find an objective truth, and doing so by subjecting their findings and interpretations to other scientists using the system of archival journals, conferences (scientific ones, not the black-tie political affair in Copenhagen), and informal communication, having some theories confirmed and others refuted. It is true that once there is a form of consensus in a scientific community that it is difficult to swim against the tide and publish something that calls it all into question. The safe thing to do is to publish "me too" papers and a lot of people will do it to get their publication count up. After all, tenure decisions are based on pubs and your ability to rake in research money. If you get the wrong high muckymucks who review your proposals mad at you, you may just find yourself unable to fund your grad students AND looking for another asst. prof job.

These scientists are working under difficult conditions since they can't really use that much primary data. To me it's like using a profilometer to measure height changes over a scale of 2 mm and then trying to predict the elevation at a distance which is 10 miles away. Or looking at the price of XYZ stock minute by minute for 2 days and then predicting what it will be in five years. Interpolating is ok, extrapolating is not. And to make it worse, they are being scrutinized by both journalists, politicians, and internet dingbats who have no clue how the scientific process works and who are trying to twist around anything they dig up as grist for their mills.

I'm all for environmental responsibility. It seems to me I remember a river catching on FIRE many years ago and we've come a long way since the 1970's as far as treating it well enough that future generations will have clean air and water. And yes we could be doing a lot more to conserve energy, especially in the US. But I draw the line at amateur scientists (like that fool who sent the news media after his weather balloon) pretending to be the real thing. I can tell the difference because I AM the real thing.

No offense to anyone in the UK, but the University of East Anglia is not exactly one of the top research institutions in the world. I never even heard of it until this thread. If a handful of people there are having trouble interpreting data of the type that led to the "hockey-stick graph" that doesn't surprise me in the least. And yes I am familar with both strong-arm tactics by people who put their ego ahead of their science AND with those who decide to go the Carl Sagan route, to say nothing of those who decide they like power who get into politics. There is a fine line between rejecting ideas that are genuinely regarded as false (for example if you get bored, read about the knock-down drag out fight between classical physics and quantum mechanics at the beginning of the 20th century - and none other than Einstein fought long and hard against quantum mechanics, which finally won out) and attempting to circumvent the scientific process. I think the emails are interesting, but as I spot check them, all I find is evidence of people trying to read tea leaves. Take a look at this one for example:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emai...=907695513.txt
what are they using, tree rings, theories from paleontologists instead of primary data. To me that is the crux of the problem. If you can't measure some physical quantity like displacement, energy, electrical resistance etc. then you are on thin ice coming up with a theory.

I'm having trouble with the idea that a handful of climate scientists at East Podunk University could have singlehandedly created a fake global warming scare. Without journalists, politicians, and lynch-mob bloggers, no one would even care about their numerical models and blips etc.

Edited to add:
Again I am skeptical of extrapolating, basing models on information that is not primary data, and of assuming a causal relationship between two parameters which happen to show a similar trend, all of which has been done by some climate scientists. There is however evidence to support the conclusion that overall, the temperature of the earth's surface has been increasing in recent years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...climate-change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ge-meteorology
What conclusions can or should be drawn from this is another matter as far as I am concerned.

If you're asking me, I'd say that the IPCC is a collection of beaurocrats and scientists who have been co-opted. They claim to be a scientific body but then there is also a Philip Morris Research Center and I bet you don't see very many reports from them about how harmful tobacco is.
http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.htm

Look who established them, the UN and WMO, which is an agency of the UN:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/about/index_en.html
This isn't a group of scientists, at least not by my standards.

Here is the organizational structure of the IPCC:
http://www.ipcc.ch/working_groups/working_groups.htm
and for me the rubber meets the road in WG1. Everything that the other two groups does depends on the validity of what comes out of WG1. If WG1 ups and says "You know what? we've examined the data and interpretation and have come to the conclusion that there are temperature cycles over periods of a couple thousand years, and it makes no difference what people do or don't do," then the other WGs can pack up and go home.

They are not putting out scientific papers, they are churning reports. There is some dry reading here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...cal_papers.htm
and I daresay that there is not a politician (or journalist) in the wolrd capable of fully understanding this one:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/paper-II-en.pdf

This however does not stop them from putting out reports like this one:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/paper-I-en.pdf
<the picture on the cover is oh-so-cute - again, this is NOT science IMO>

By the way I wouldn't be too quick to blame any scientists who are affiliated with the IPCC or quoted by them. For fun I looked up Hans von Storch, who has been critical of the antropogenic global warming theory, but not in the way reported in the media.
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/
Some of it (in German) is him complaining about having been misquoted by the FAZ. By the way I worked at the GKSS Research Center for 7-1/2 years, in a different institute than Prof von Storch and I left before he joined. Anyway please take a look, he specifically mentions WG1 of the IPCC and defends them.

I don't think it's all about religion, though I do believe religion is used as an excuse for those that don't want to give up any of their material goodies or money for the sake of the environment.

We have a local newscaster on record saying that neither climate change or pollution would make any real difference, because god wouldn't let humanity ruin the planet.

Well the skepticism about global warming IMO is no different than the skepticism about evolution...
Since I was a biology major, I can say for certain that within biology, saying that you don't believe in evolution is like denying the entire field of biology,my first semester as a freshman my biology professor said "nothing in biology makes sense without evolution" and those were his exact words- I am saying this to illustrate that denying evolution means never being taken seriously in science. Saying that evolution isn't real within the field of biology, is just like saying that bacteria and viruses aren't the real cause of disease, it is really fomites that cause disease.
But then looking at the public- few people deny the existance of viruses and bacteria but there is a huge amount of people who deny evolution. For someone who has been in biology- to deny evolution is like to deny gravity. Looking at it from that perspective it makes no sense unless you put religion there, i.e. faith without any amount of logic or reason. What is it about science that makes it lose a certain amount of authority when we switch from medicine to evolution or earth science? It is the same institution, it should have the same amount of authority, but a lot of the public feels skeptical, but the fact of the matter is the same type of rules apply to each field, there is still peer review and even in climatology, the rules of statistics apply where certain confidence intervals that have to be met in order for data to be considered statistically significant, i.e -fact. Just because something is extrapolated doesn't mean that it can be dismissed as unreliable...People with absolutely no education in the field are trying to put their opinions out there, trying to question data that scientists have spent their entire lives of hard work trying to develop an explanation for a certain event. I truly feel like it is outrageous and insulting.

The real point is that it's not just these scientists, but those all over the world who were communicating about hiding alternate views and uncomfortable data. And it wasn't just this little university who chose to destroy all the raw data that they were making extrapolations from.

What kind of scientist (or statistician) destroys the data that they're working from?

I don't know why that's surprising. Many scientists are denied publication because they either try to manipulate their data or they simply don't produce enough research. There is a good system of making sure research is legimitimate, it isn't simply that the scientists submit their data to the journal and they take their word for it. Nowhere in the articles I've read does it say that the data has been published so as far as I can see, no major facts about global warming have gone down the drain..
All I see is their private communication amongst each other, which makes them look mean spirited and sneaky, but their bad taste and their tendency to lie doesn't prove anything about their research ..