HermannH - 03 January 2010 07:14 PM

Unfortunately I can’t give you a detailed answer, I am heading out of town for a few days.

In the meantime I invite you to ponder the fact that the paper in question hasn’t garnered more attention.

It was published a year ago and has been available in manuscript form for much longer. The lengthy discussion thread (apparently over 1000 messages) happened 2 years ago. So the paper wasn’t really born into obscurity. Yet your link was the first time I heard of it. Now why would thousands of lobbyists fight it out in Copenhagen without one of them bringing up the ‘proven fact’ that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist.

Given the heated debate about AGW around the globe this should be a news story that can hold its own against Micheal Jackson and Tiger Woods.

Sure, Brian, there is an ‘evil conspiracy’ going on. But no one bringing up the topic? That’s a conspiracy that even humbles the mafia, perpetrated to a large degree by a bunch of climatologists.

BTW, you still didn’t respond to my accusation that you blatantly misrepresented the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory position on AGW.

And there is something else you need to do: If you are still convinced that the greenhouse gas effect does not exist you should remove the ‘MAXIMIZE CH4’ part from your signature.

As you say, “the first you heard” ....
the struggle against the smothering effect of the insider consensus has been going on for some time, however.  My little LL tweak was a kind of mini-ironic payback for the blatant abuse of the political tactic and priority of claiming and manufacturing and enforcing apparent “consensus” where none existed. As early as the early ‘90s some principal authors of the IPCC reports had their dissident and qualified cautionary opinions and results buried and edited out, and had to threaten, and go right to the courthouse door brink with, lawsuits to have their names removed from the ‘co-sponsor’ and contributing authors lists. Name-dropping and use of pressure tactics on institutions and abuse of the contra-scientific processes of group-think, defunding threats, political influence, and similar lobbying tactics have been inherent in the campaign to exclude anything resembling real-world challenges and science from the debate.  The use of the word “consensus” is a red flag for anti-scientific venal manipulation.

This is not altogether unique in kind, though it may be in degree, within the interface of science and politics and group-think. Fusion research, Big-Bang physics, the helicobacter/ulcer episode, the banning of DDT, the rush to make biofuel from corn, and on and on, represent other high-impact examples (frequently involving huge death tolls) of leveraging incomplete and shoddy science to keep extant power and resource controls immune from challenge. It is human nature to substitute comfortable, lazy, consensual short-cuts for the scientific method, and of course the political funding bodies and interests are structurally and inherently opposed to objective feedback criteria for allocating resources. So your complaint is a matter of coal dust calling beach sand “black”.

GW theory is the new (current) Lysenko-ism. Enjoy it while you can.

Brian H - 02 January 2010 10:56 PM

As for CO2, here’s the deal:
Once the smoke clears from Climategate, and the full extent of the carbon-control hoax is exposed, all the subsidy-grabbing greenie projects will have to be defunded, and many of their scamboni founders and floggers jailed. Then we can begin encouraging maximum CO2 production to help Planet Earth get over its CO2 famine*.  A target of returning to the geological average of 1,000-2,000 ppm should be set, which will greatly boost agriculture and food supply.

(FF doesn’t need to hitch its wagon to the diseased CO2-remediation horse. Economics is more than sufficient motive power.)

To the extent AGW assertions can’t be substantiated, neither can yours.

However, as to the bit about FF not needing to hitch its wagon - the history of fusion research funding is very closely tied to panics such as this GW thing represents (Racing Russians for nuclear supremacy, OPEC fears). I can prove it, too.  No need to doctor the graph or throw out the “mona loa” data.  Steve Chu, is trying to leverage GW for fusion even as we speak. 

Your assertions above don’t seem strategic, or useful to the fusion endeavor.  And it sounds like you’ve got an inverse consensus thing going.  Swallowing the criticisms whole.

Have you put this kind of energy into iraq-gate?  Or wall-street-bailout-gate?  How many billions, trillions is that? 

And these cap and trade scams of which you speak with utter contempt - how egregious are they compared to status quo scams today?  Isn’t Wall Street continually coming up with ridiculously pointless economic instruments that keep money in the hands of a few rich people and don’t create jobs or anything for the rest of us?  One speculative bubble after another?  Why don’t you take on wall street structural issues?  This is not a “science” issue, it’s a wall street subsidy mechanism issue.  You’d need to change that across the board - not just for the one GW market segment.

Of all the scams, why is this the one that outrages you the most? 

It seems you have a disproportionate, passionate and highly emotional response to the green stuff.  Such language you use.  I get the feeling this is a smoke screen for something.  Not sure what.  Is your goal really to defund “subsidy-grabbing” green projects (are they greater subsidy-grabbers than our beloved status quo wall street fat cats?) and to jail and flog the project founders? 

What I have a problem with is the alienating tone of voice this keeps falling back into.  At some point, I will set up a cap and trade policy on our forums re: GWarming-mongering.  I think you’ve used up your allotment of comments you can make on this subject. 

From Terry Pratchet:

Keep the peace.  That was the thing.  People often failed to understand what that meant.  You’d go to some life-threatening disturbance.  Like a couple of neighbors scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties.  And they’d both be bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling…and they all expected you to sort it out.

And they could never understand that it wasn’t your job.  Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe.  Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-justification, to get them to stop shouting, and to get them off the street.  Once that had been achieved, your job was over…

Of course, if your few strict words didn’t work, and Mr. Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed fence and stabbed Mr. Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge-Argument Murder.

Such a froth.

Rezwan - 04 January 2010 01:59 AM

Brian H - 02 January 2010 10:56 PM

As for CO2, here’s the deal:
Once the smoke clears from Climategate, and the full extent of the carbon-control hoax is exposed, all the subsidy-grabbing greenie projects will have to be defunded, and many of their scamboni founders and floggers jailed. Then we can begin encouraging maximum CO2 production to help Planet Earth get over its CO2 famine*.  A target of returning to the geological average of 1,000-2,000 ppm should be set, which will greatly boost agriculture and food supply.

(FF doesn’t need to hitch its wagon to the diseased CO2-remediation horse. Economics is more than sufficient motive power.)

To the extent AGW assertions can’t be substantiated, neither can yours.

However, as to the bit about FF not needing to hitch its wagon - the history of fusion research funding is very closely tied to panics such as this GW thing represents (Racing Russians for nuclear supremacy, OPEC fears). I can prove it, too.  No need to doctor the graph or throw out the “mona loa” data.  Steve Chu, is trying to leverage GW for fusion even as we speak. 

Your assertions above don’t seem strategic, or useful to the fusion endeavor.  And it sounds like you’ve got an inverse consensus thing going.  Swallowing the criticisms whole.

Have you put this kind of energy into iraq-gate?  Or wall-street-bailout-gate?  How many billions, trillions is that? 

And these cap and trade scams of which you speak with utter contempt - how egregious are they compared to status quo scams today?  ...

Of all the scams, why is this the one that outrages you the most? 

It seems you have a disproportionate, passionate and highly emotional response to the green stuff.  Such language you use.  I get the feeling this is a smoke screen for something.  Not sure what.  Is your goal really to defund “subsidy-grabbing” green projects (are they greater subsidy-grabbers than our beloved status quo wall street fat cats?) and to jail and flog the project founders? 

What I have a problem with is the alienating tone of voice this keeps falling back into.  At some point, I will set up a cap and trade policy on our forums re: GWarming-mongering.  I think you’ve used up your allotment of comments you can make on this subject. 

From Terry Pratchet:

Keep the peace. 
...

Such a froth.

Believe it or not, this is bigger. It is leveraging whole countries’ economics, and has the potential to pauperize much of the world. Energy production and CO2 emission are the carotid arteries of the planet.  Control them, and you control everything. 

FF has the blessed potential to short-circuit the entire racket. (Yes, “racket” in the full-blown sense of RICO violation, and more.)  The fumbling and bumbling of COP15 has kept much of the worst abuse from going into effect in the short term, and the exposure of Climategate has begun to give actual hard scientists the nerve and the cover to bring their data and research pushes to the fore. Nothing like direct evidence of insiders conspiring to free objectors from the smear of being called “conspiracy theorists”! 

The carbon exchange market, BTW, was anticipated to be accelerated from the Billion$$ range into the Trillions$$ in a few years had the “legally-binding” constraints that were eagerly anticipated at COP15 gone into effect. The consolation prize is a roll-over of the present market, so Gore et al. will have to be content with their present rate of enrichment for a few years.

MEANWHILE, two major developments are set to derail the whole enterprise.  1) Real scientific testing and independent research, and 2) Focus Fusion. 

We’ve hopefully dodged not just a bullet, but a tactical nuclear artillery shell. 

As for opportunistically leveraging the Greenie-Scare environment to fund FF, be VERY careful which dogs you lie down with.  People like Chu may not just give you fleas, but turn and tear your throat out if you seem to be undercutting their agendas. And FF would in fact render his entire agenda irrelevant. Beware!

Not one word of that Nature article made me think that he would be directing any resources at FF, by the way. He is fully into the promotion of “climate change legislation”, AKA enforced Cap And Trade, which is tantamount to making the bureaucracy the controller and gatekeeper for every industrial process and every use of energy in the country.

The hysterical fear-mongering is entirely on the side of the climate alarmists. Consider that even their best projections of the effects of CO2 constraint actually have a 100-year impact of fractions of a degree (the 2°C and similar targets are ludicrous PR nonsense in so many ways it would take pages to describe them.)  The “payoff” for the shackling and crippling of the world economy is barely measurable at the limits of detection! 

This is way beyond stupid and duplicitous.

Brian H - 04 January 2010 02:41 AM

Believe it or not, this is bigger. It is leveraging whole countries’ economics, and has the potential to pauperize much of the world. Energy production and CO2 emission are the carotid arteries of the planet.  Control them, and you control everything.

 
I’m from Iran.  That country has had its economy and politics leveraged by western policies for some time now.  (It also has a lot of energy production and C02 - but that doesn’t seem to have helped it much).  Big problems, but I still don’t feel the panic you do. 

FF has the blessed potential to short-circuit the entire racket.

  Fusion ex-machina.  I do have to point out here that fusion is under-funded, and many approaches are seen as futile scams in their own right.  Read “sun in a bottle” - the dude gets almost as righteous as you - except against fusion rather than GW.  Until I see full funding of LPP and other fusion projects, GW is an ally. 

(Yes, “racket” in the full-blown sense of RICO violation, and more.)

Of all the rackets you target.  You don’t have any comparative data here.  Oh, because you cherry pick the estimates of the costs based on countries adopting the most draconian policies.  Of course. 

The fumbling and bumbling of COP15 has kept much of the worst abuse from going into effect in the short term,

This is how it works.  No need to panic, these things get sorted out.  Cost benefits happen.  Bjorn Lomborg’s book:

Lomborg has little doubt that global warming is occurring, that human activities are a factor, and that all of this presents us with problems and challenges. However, he is adamant that there is no need to panic, that attempts to cut greenhouse emissions now are a costly waste of time, and that adaptation for the medium-term future, coupled with investment in research and development (R&D) for the longer term, would make for a more sensible way forward.
—review of Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “Cool It”

Your approach is to hope for a fusion-ex-machina event, and to smear a different set of scientists. 

and the exposure of Climategate has begun to give actual hard scientists the nerve and the cover to bring their data and research pushes to the fore. Nothing like direct evidence of insiders conspiring to free objectors from the smear of being called “conspiracy theorists”!

The process takes time.  The “peer review lag” effect.  And then there will be “objectors” to the “conspiracy theorists” and so on.  Have fun wading through all the reports as it asymptotically approaches some sort of other consensus - or not. 

The carbon exchange market, BTW, was anticipated to be accelerated from the Billion$$ range into the Trillions$$ in a few years had the “legally-binding” constraints that were eagerly anticipated at COP15 gone into effect. The consolation prize is a roll-over of the present market, so Gore et al. will have to be content with their present rate of enrichment for a few years.

Cherry picking conjecture about economic impacts.  Haven’t you read the “Black Swan” yet?  You think climate effects are hard to predict - economic anticipations are even more meaningless.  I have quite a few friends who didn’t think they’d lose their houses, and this is well before COP15. 

MEANWHILE, two major developments are set to derail the whole enterprise.  1) Real scientific testing and independent research, and 2) Focus Fusion.

So you have absolute faith that, as long as they are “objectors” to the “consensus”, then they will be doing “real scientific testing”.  Interesting criteria. 

And…back to focus fusion - still short on the funding.  Hoping to jump on the GW gravy train.  But if you can drum up the money from your “objector” colleagues - that’ll be great.

We’ve hopefully dodged not just a bullet, but a tactical nuclear artillery shell.

  Quite a few people around the world have dodged and continue to dodge American bullets, bombs and shells.  It’s funny that you’re so panicked about this GW shell aimed at the American way of life.  Kind of poetic.  A great nation taken down by its own fears.

As for opportunistically leveraging the Greenie-Scare environment to fund FF, be VERY careful which dogs you lie down with.  People like Chu may not just give you fleas, but turn and tear your throat out if you seem to be undercutting their agendas. And FF would in fact render his entire agenda irrelevant. Beware!

Yeah, see, there’s that fear again.  You seem like a very fearful person.  You scare me more than greenies.  With greenies, I nod for a while, acknowledging their fears of warming - but then talk about policies, and use that Bjorn Lomborg approach to get them to relax on the extreme policy responses, and move to more sensible responses.  It doesn’t panic me.  Didn’t expect COP to pass the scary stuff. 

But with you…it’s just all fear.  And the need to jail greenies and defund interesting energy saving research?  I’d like a world with more research of all kinds, whether it ends up being useful or not.  Knowledge increases. 

I also like the theoretical questions raised by global warming.  More research into climate will eventually lead to advances in terraforming.  Add to that GW-panic induced fusion research and who knows -  one day, centuries, millenia from now, there will be “Ringworld” engineers. 

It doesn’t seem to me you know how to have fun with this.  It seems to me that all you want to do is cancel out GW climate research and carry on with things as they are.  Is your lifestyle that perfect that you don’t want anything rocking it?

GW folks have one kind of fear, and you have another kind.  I just don’t find yours compelling.  It doesn’t seem like you want to explore possibilities - more like you just want to shut certain people up.

FF needs money

Warmsters want less CO2 in the energy mix.
Some countries want (need) more and cheaper energy.
Some countries want less reliance on unreliable hydrocarbon sources.
Other communities want a dispersed/local supply.

FF has something to offer to them all.

Never mind what you think of them;
Sell them the bit they want to hear;
Take their money.
End of.

Rezwan - 04 January 2010 03:26 AM

...

As for opportunistically leveraging the Greenie-Scare environment to fund FF, be VERY careful which dogs you lie down with.  People like Chu may not just give you fleas, but turn and tear your throat out if you seem to be undercutting their agendas. And FF would in fact render his entire agenda irrelevant. Beware!

Yeah, see, there’s that fear again.  You seem like a very fearful person.  You scare me more than greenies.  With greenies, I nod for a while, acknowledging their fears of warming - but then talk about policies, and use that Bjorn Lomborg approach to get them to relax on the extreme policy responses, and move to more sensible responses.  It doesn’t panic me.  Didn’t expect COP to pass the scary stuff. 

But with you…it’s just all fear.  And the need to jail greenies and defund interesting energy saving research?  I’d like a world with more research of all kinds, whether it ends up being useful or not.  Knowledge increases. 

I also like the theoretical questions raised by global warming.  More research into climate will eventually lead to advances in terraforming.  Add to that GW-panic induced fusion research and who knows -  one day, centuries, millenia from now, there will be “Ringworld” engineers. 

It doesn’t seem to me you know how to have fun with this.  It seems to me that all you want to do is cancel out GW climate research and carry on with things as they are.  Is your lifestyle that perfect that you don’t want anything rocking it?

GW folks have one kind of fear, and you have another kind.  I just don’t find yours compelling.  It doesn’t seem like you want to explore possibilities - more like you just want to shut certain people up.

Nasty and stupid ad hominem comment. (Fritz Perls, in “The Intimate Enemy”, described it as telling someone else what they think and feel.  The term he used is “mind ****ing”.) It shows a surprising “lightness of mind”. The imposition of draconian CO2 controls to solve a problem which doesn’t exist does not inspire fear; it inspires outrage. Those who are trying to pull it off have been egregious in their abuse of political and scientific institutions, and need to be stopped.  Now.

And you’d better do some checking: their withholding of publicly paid-for data IS specified as a felonious criminal activity both in the UK and here.  It is not accidental, nor is it trivial. It is the only thing which has kept the sham alive, because the raw data is completely incompatible with their assertions.

As a small but important e.g., consider that after growing pressure, the IPCC models finally included adjustments to compensate for the engulfing of reporting stations by urban heat islands.  But when the details are examined it turns out, incredibly, that the net adjustment made to those stations is to slightly INCREASE their reported temperatures!  This kind of blatant distortion and dishonesty is ubiquitous in the modelling and data management.  It is symptomatic of scientific gangrene. 

Rage, baby.  NOT fear!

Have we all got New Year’s hangovers or something?

Who ever you are angy at it shouldn’t be each other.

In this place we are all on the same side.

Be nice.

Brian H - 04 January 2010 10:51 AM

because the raw data is completely incompatible with their assertions.

Not a rhetorical question but if the raw data has been withheld how do you know this? Were can I get a copy?

Readers might find this site enlightening http://www.surfacestations.org/
It shows that at least 80% of surface stations, used to construct the word temperature, have an officially recognised error margin greater than the much reported 100 year change in temperatures.

Phil’s Dad - 04 January 2010 05:21 PM

Brian H - 04 January 2010 10:51 AM

because the raw data is completely incompatible with their assertions.

Not a rhetorical question but if the raw data has been withheld how do you know this? Were can I get a copy?

Readers might find this site enlightening http://www.surfacestations.org/
It shows that at least 80% of surface stations, used to construct the word temperature, have an officially recognised error margin greater than the much reported 100 year change in temperatures.

There’s lots of documentation of the “withholding”; here’s a wee taste of it from the Canadian who popped the “hockey stick” gas-bag: http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/01/sent-loads-of-station-data-to-scott/ . 

And from http://www.tysknews.com/News/untangle_climategate.html :

  No reliance can be placed upon purported temperature trends that depend arbitrarily upon a careful selection of start-dates and end-dates. The reason is that the temperature record is what scientists call “stochastic” – it jumps up and down more or less at random, so that the trend-line calculated from it (the straight line in each of the above graphs) is highly sensitive to the scientists’ choice of startpoints and endpoints. 

One of Monckton’s explanations of the graphs is worth repeating here:

  Therefore there is no anthropogenic signal in the global temperature record, and no scientific basis whatsoever for the assertion by the UN’s climate panel that the warming rate is accelerating. The UN’s graph is merely a pictorial lie, deliberately intended to deceive. And the lie continues to be paraded every time Railroad Engineer Pachauri gives one of his rambling, out-of-his-depth lectures. It is also paraded in the Technical Support Document by which the US Environmental Protection Agency purports to justify its proposal to treat carbon dioxide as though it were a pollutant rather than a harmless trace gas absolutely essential to all life on Earth and currently – compared with former eras – in somewhat short supply in the atmosphere.

  [Note: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN panel’s science working group, is not a scientist, but a railroad engineer.]
...
When Mr. Watts first began to point out these defects in how temperature is measured, and began to attract publicity for his work via his admirable website, http://www.wattsupwiththat.com , the first reaction of the scientists in charge of the network of U.S. temperature stations that he has surveyed was to remove from the public domain the list of precise locations for the sensors, so that Mr. Watts could not survey any more of the stations. 

However, there was an outcry at this scandalous attempt at concealment of data that had been paid for by the public, and to which the public were on any view entitled.

The bureaucrats – who had at first tried to react exactly as Professor Jones and his colleagues at the Climate Research Unit had reacted, by hiding public scientific data – climbed down and republished the locations for their temperature stations, and Mr. Watts’ survey is now all but complete. 

It shows a horrifying picture of gross carelessness and neglect on the part of Mr. Karl and the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, and of Dr. Hansen and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Garbage In, and hand-sculpted Garbage Out.

But here’s a fer-‘zample of the kind of station report that they didn’t want shown: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/coalcreekco2009.gif

Happy Monday! 

This thread is now officially capped, per our new GW Policy.