# Is Global Warming science? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 25, 2009, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856 "2009-11-25T01:50:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/41 "2009-11-25T07:27:24Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And you have a fixation with the 70’s I couldn’t care less about the 70’s. You brought them up; I’ve mentioned them only in hopes of understanding why we can’t just drop them from the discussion. I’m likewise uninterested in the projection levels; my sole point is to focus – with _ **no** _ reference to the 70’s, and _ **regardless** _ of whether the lower temperatures in question fall outside the projection levels – on whether temperatures that remain constant or cool in the next 10 years count against “warming”. > [@](#): > > The point is that if in the next 10 years the temperatures remain constant or cooling that then the theory will suffer a huge blow … A temperature decrease in the next decade should indeed count against the current theories regarding AGW IMHO. Then we’re in considerable agreement. Of course, I wouldn’t have introduced mention of “projection levels” as distinguished from “70’s levels”, since (as you now say) _ **any** _ decrease should indeed count, and even _ **constancy** _ would be a huge blow to the theory; here’s to science, and watching the next 10 years play out – be it cooling or warming or constancy, _ **period.** _ ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/42 "2009-11-25T07:41:28Z")
The temperatures, and fluid movements of air ice and water comprising the climate of the planet are far more numerous than our instrumental data can measure, even after the exponential growth of such instrumentality over the last century. The interrelationships among those data, and the resultant data projected forward in time are beyond the entire computational ability of our race at this time, and even given an exponential growth of such computational ability likely to remain beyond us for another generation. Changing that state of affairs is science. But predicting the future of climate is a highly desired activity. The methodology, and the scientific validity of that methodology is far less important to most of those who pay for it than the conformity of that prediction to desired outcomes. The amount of effort that it takes to do the science is far greater than the amount of effort it takes to promulgate an argument that supports ones desired opinions. How do you and I, as non scientists decide which we have just read? We must consider the broadest possible set of data we can get. We must make a judgment for ourselves, based on how well we understand the subject. That takes a lot of work as well, and it leaves us only marginally better informed than we were. So, we appeal to authority. Now doing that is a classical logical error that has a Latin name. It is what you do in an argument when you should say “I don’t know.” Now add to the argument the hard fact that the answer, no matter which side of the argument you are on will require the actions of multiple governments, of variable levels of representative responsibility to the people of the world. No personal action of my own will change the outcome by an amount I can access a means to measure. So, I chose to support the side which I think is most likely to benefit the greatest number of people in the world, in the future. Is that science? No. I do think that the evidence of the science I do understand supports the contentions that human activity is producing climate change, and energy use is a very large part of the cause of the changes. Refutations involving ad hominem attacks are less compelling than those involving actual studies, and measurements. I doubt that proof is something I can expect with any certainty. So, I rely on the science, when I can, and the scientists when I cannot understand the science. My examinations show a very large number of scientists, and a huge amount of science that supports the AGW side of the argument, and a much smaller number of both that supports the negation of that contention. Now here I must add that when folks are not talking to me about actual investigation of actual climate matters, I tend not to include them in my thinking. The movie Inconvenient Truth? Didn’t see it. The blogospheric temperature records don’t contribute to my opinion. Press releases from political figures are not science. I read a few dozen of the source reports of the First and Second IPCC reports, and a few dozen of the reports that followed purporting to refute them. Most of the second categories were not about evidence collected for the report, but evidence from the first reports re-examined by different methods I found that less convincing. The entire exercise left me with a strong feeling that AGW was a very likely contention, based on what I can understand of the science. So, I believe that human actions are changing the climate of the planet, at an accelerating rate. I think I believe it for reasons based on hard science. I also believe strongly that our understanding of that system is far less than complete. Catastrophic climate change takes decades. Decade long climate events from the remote past are invisible to us. Millennial long changes in climate are difficult to measure in any but the most recent periods. The causes of those changes are not known. Implication drawn from proxies are inherently limited in reliability even looking back in time. The science is beyond me, and perhaps beyond our society at the present. Of course that is almost always the case, for we don’t study what we already know, but rather, what we don’t know. No, **Scylla** , Global Warming is not science. Science is a tool to understand the observed phenomenon of Global Warming. It may be a tool sufficient to the task, it may not. But politics is certainly not such a tool, and politics will drive our decisions. So, we will experience whatever consequence the political solution to phenomenon causes. Since the contention that there ain’t no such thing as global warming seems to have a strong political voice, I expect a fairly grim outcome. Tris My religion is unrelated to the phenomenon, so I don’t consider it from that point of view. ---
**Author:** ![UTejas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UTejas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UTejas)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/43 "2009-11-25T08:11:37Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > \ > I have always thought that mankind had an effect on the planet, and that wanton polluting had adverse consequences, and that conservation is a prudent strategy. However, a few years ago when I heard things like “Climate change is no longer open for debate.” Or. “A consensus of climate scientists declare global warming a fact,” I became uncomfortable. > > This really isn’t how science works. Science should be about facts, not opinions. Opinions don’t matter. How many people believe something doesn’t matter. A steadfast assertion shutting down dissenting argument is not science. It’s faith, or politics. Maybe both. > > So, what I’d like to debate is this: > > Is global warming science? > > I think not. I think it has left the realm of science when debate and skeptical examination is no longer welcomed. > > \ I disagree with your assertion that AGW/ACC is not “science”. I think that the problem is that science has been too closely entangled with public policy, as I alluded to in previous posts. The science ends when we enter the area of “if the science tells us X, we must do Y”. Over 10,000 papers have been published in respected, peer-reviewed journals that directly support ACC (probably the more accurate term). Declarations of things as fact or “no longer open for debate” are typically paired with arguments of what must be done to change its progression. If ACC were accepted as fact and undebatable, then nobody would be publishing papers, refining models, and continuing to do research. The fact that research is always ongoing is continued proof that nothing is ever declared “fact”. ACC is, however, the accepted consensus and central model. It is formed from the vast bulk of research and evidence. By consensus, I mean that no single paper or finding will be capable of overturning the model that is capable of describing many varied phenomena and making predictions for future behavior. Papers that do not fit into the overall model are simply another piece of data towards refining our understanding. Can we agree that “scientific consensus” may refer to the bulk of present peer-reviewed evidence and is independent of opinions of individual scientists? Can we also agree that “scientific consensus” indicates that a single contrarian paper is simply 1 in 10,000 pieces of evidence and no one piece is capable of overturning the entire model? Now then, we likely agree that scientific research is ongoing and that no model/hypothesis is settled and permanent. At this point science ends. The present models make predictions for the future, it is not the realm of science to argue what should be done. The realm is now public policy, which may draw from science but is not doing science. Casting aside the fact that _Superfreakonomics_ DOES make some errors in the science and does peddle in sensationalism a bit, a large portion of the chapter is devoted to policy. From [This Interview with Levitt in The Onion AV Club](http://www.avclub.com/articles/steven-d-levitt,35441/): > [@Steven Levitt](#): > > Our chapter does not deny the existence of global warming. What we do is, we say that the current solution people are proposing is one that involves reducing carbon emissions dramatically. The problem with that solution is, it’s incredibly expensive. The economists who have looked at it think it will cost trillions of dollars in reduced economic output to accomplish it. Also, it requires everyone in the world to get together and suddenly become allies and friends to try and change their behavior, to moderate how much they produce. And even if we do it, because carbon dioxide stays in the air for so long, it will take 50 years to really feel the benefits, or even know if we are getting benefits. So we take a very different approach, which says, “Let’s just say the earth got too hot and we wanted to make it cooler, would reducing carbon emissions be the right way to go?” And we think the answer is no. > > We think there are other ways. In particular, we highlight three different solutions, called geo-engineering solutions, which involve using technology to, in this case, moderate how much sunlight actually reaches the earth. Some guys have a prototype, it would cost $200 million to build it, we could build it in three months, we could put sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and if it works, the earth can be cooled down in a year. And if it doesn’t work? We just take it down with no repercussions. > > I think what’s really strange is that the status quo, when it comes to environmentalism, has decided that we have a problem, but they’re not willing to put reasonable solutions to the problem on the table. That’s the way we’re trying to change the debate, but there are incredibly powerful forces that are trying to keep the debate from being heard. He’s not talking science here. He’s talking about RESULTS from science and discussing how to apply them in the real world. I don’t see how the points he makes are incorrect. He’s questioning what we should do to counteract what the science predicts will happen. Once again, speaking as a scientist, arguing about what we should do is simply not my job. I can understand attacking Levitt for getting some basic science wrong and for citing Newsweek articles as if they were peer reviewed science representing some consensus. I cannot condone attacking him for suggesting that if ACC is real (it is) then it might not be worth the cost of fixing it (it might not be. Not my job to figure it out). It is important to draw a distinction between the scientific method and turning scientific progress into real world solutions. Levitt later says “Absolutely. It’s called climate science, but there’s as much climate politics as there is science going on.” He’s making the problem worse! He’s descibing a problem that is ALL politics and labeling that as science. > [@Scylla](#): > > \ > To me, that sums up the problem. In the minds of some, it’s ok to falsify data because the ends justify the means. Personally, I think that clean and efficient power, conservation, and good stewardship of the planet are worthy goals in and of themselves. They do not sullied by lies or falsehoods, nor should such ever be excused. > > Sadly, I think there comes a point where an issue becomes so polarized and political that one no longer knows what to trust. Climate change is there. > > Global warming is no longer science. It’s politics or religion. No real scientist thinks it is ok to falsify data. Good thing that none of the Hadley CRU or any other climate scientists have done so. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/44 "2009-11-25T08:32:54Z")
There are clearly issues with the way that global warming research is carried out. Is it a science? Some is, some isn’t. After the revelations out of the CRU E-mails, I’m fairly convinced that at least in their case, the quality of their science is very poor. They are hiding data, refusing to release the source code of the model software, and even threatening to destroy source data rather than comply with FOIA requests. That is categorically not scientific behavior. Furthermore, their data is shockingly, horrifyingly bad. That’s probably why they don’t want to release it. It’s an embarrassment. From what I can tell, they have had no version control, no protocols for protecting data or preventing it from being damaged or modified. If someone wanted to test some ideas, he’d grab one of the files and make a copy, using the same file name but just dropping it in another directory. Then he might make all kinds of changes to the data to test out various models, and somewhere along the way the data got mixed in with others and people lost track of which dataset was the ‘accurate’ one. There are E-mails from a computer guy who was re-running the model software against their datasets and getting wildly different answers than the same software got a few years ago against supposedly the same data. Trying to track down the source of the errors, he came across reams of bad data, bugs in the computer code, oblique comments scrawled in readme files about ‘adjustments’ made to the numbers but with no way to know which ones they were. This is amateur hour stuff. And this database is one of the key pieces of evidence that could change the course of the entire planet. Trillions of dollars could be spent based in part on the conclusions derived from this stuff, and the clowns at CRU can’t even be trusted to keep the data files protected. It makes you weep. One thing that I learned from this - from this point on, any paper published on climate science should have the data archived in the public domain. Any computer models used must have their source code placed in the public domain. You asked if this is science - one of the key tenets of science is that you publish, and you make your data and methodology available to _anyone_ to pick apart and try to reproduce or falsify. This is not what’s going on in the climate field. It’s also becoming evident that the peer review process is broken or weakened by the politics behind global warming. Increasingly, the scientists involved are only peer-reviewing fellow believers. Skeptics need not apply. This is an extremely unscientific attitude. Another thing that came out of those E-mails is the amount of bias the researchers have. Anomalies are a scientist’s friend. Advancements in science don’t come from the broad strokes people agree on, but by the outliers that don’t fit the theory. The unpredictable orbit of Mercury, or the noise in your radio telescope that shouldn’t be there. But it seems like the instinctive reaction of the climate scientists at CRU to data that doesn’t fit the theories is to A) attack the messenger, B) tweak the models to bury the anomaly, C) jump through hoops to explain or massage it away, or D) ignore it. In a lot of ways, climate science is like economics or string theory. It’s not testable, and it’s not falsifiable, and it’s a study of complex chaotic systems that are just at the limits of our ability to understand. You can build all kinds of complex models to explain past data, but they suck at predicting the future. There are no controls groups you can easily use to build experiments. In such fields, it often comes down to convincing people you’re right by appeals to authority. Thus, you see group letters of support signed by economists and climate scientists, but you don’t see them for people proposing the existence of a Higgs Boson or black holes, because in the harder sciences, where hypotheses can be tested and the data and methodologies are available to all, your theories have to succeed or fail on their merits. You can be the world’s most honored physicist, and if a 14 year old kid spots a critical flaw in your theory and can demonstrate it experimentally, you’re toast. No popularity contest will save you. And that’s how it should be. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/45 "2009-11-25T13:38:52Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What’s the actual downside, dare I ask? I mean, seriously, it’s not like AGW deniers are being fed to lions or anything. Credibility – or the lack – is the downside. When we as a society impose rules, we do it based on our aggregate consent for those rules…which in turn is derived from our weighing the costs and benefits of those rules. You may feel that the changes were a net positive even without the spectre of changing the global warming picture, but the rest of us may not agree. If you secure the cooperation of the country based on a lie, you steal the right of the people to decide policy based on the truth. You arrogate to yourself the right to weigh the costs against the benefits, because only you know the true benefits; the people unaware of the deception are proceeding with a false understanding of the benefits. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/46 "2009-11-25T13:49:24Z")
I think it’s pretty obvious that people who believe in the general goals associated with AGW will be inclined to see this data breach revelation as inconsequential, and those doubtful about AGW see this as proof that they were right to be skeptical. Confirmation bias all around. To me, the most damning allegations are not the garbage about cheering when someone dies; that is clearly petty bickering. But the discussions about deliberately deleting mail rather than provide it; about pressuring a peer-reviewed journal to stop them publishing skeptical papers while simultaneously publicly deriding skeptics for failing to publish in peer-reviewed journals; and the obvious poor control of data integrity – those are all serious problems. It’s doubtful that this changes everything. Before this revelation, I had thought there was a 90% chance that the AGW claims were correct. Now that number is less than 90%. I don’t know enough yet to know if it’s 89.5% or 65%, but there shouldn’t be any serious belief that this revelation is either a total refutation of AGW or that it’s utterly meaningless. Either view is foolish. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/47 "2009-11-25T13:59:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Another thing that came out of those E-mails is the amount of bias the researchers have. Anomalies are a scientist’s friend. Advancements in science don’t come from the broad strokes people agree on, but by the outliers that don’t fit the theory. The unpredictable orbit of Mercury, or the noise in your radio telescope that shouldn’t be there. But it seems like the instinctive reaction of the climate scientists at CRU to data that doesn’t fit the theories is to A) attack the messenger, B) tweak the models to bury the anomaly, C) jump through hoops to explain or massage it away, or D) ignore it. > > In a lot of ways, climate science is like economics or string theory. It’s not testable, and it’s not falsifiable, and it’s a study of complex chaotic systems that are just at the limits of our ability to understand. > > You can build all kinds of complex models to explain past data, but they suck at predicting the future. There are no controls groups you can easily use to build experiments. > **[How we know global warming is still happening](https://skepticalscience.com/How-do-we-know-global-warming-is-still-happening.html)** > > Skeptics proclaim that global warming stopped in 1998. That we're now experiencing global cooling. However, these arguments overlook one simple physical reality - the land and atmosphere are only one small fraction of the Earth's climate (albeit the... > **[How we know global warming is happening, Part 2](https://skepticalscience.com/How-we-know-global-warming-is-happening-Part-2.html)** > > In our last post, we determined whether global warming was still happening by adding up all the heat content of the climate system.  Murphy 2009 performed this analysis and found that that planet has been accumulating heat up to 2003. Unfortunately... Ignoring the history of how we got here is still bad. Assuming all scientists are like in the emails you refer to is even worse. > **[How reliable are climate models?](https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm)** > > \While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.\ > [@](#): > > What the science says… > > While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have successfully predicted future climate change. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/48 "2009-11-25T14:53:06Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > To me, the most damning allegations are not the garbage about cheering when someone dies; that is clearly petty bickering. But the discussions about deliberately deleting mail rather than provide it; about pressuring a peer-reviewed journal to stop them publishing skeptical papers while simultaneously publicly deriding skeptics for failing to publish in peer-reviewed journals; and the obvious poor control of data integrity – those are all serious problems. Well I did mention an example (McIntyre) of an skeptic managing to get into the publication of the AGU, and then the AGU showed how convincing he was. AFAIK, there have been cases of poor control of data, but not all scientific organizations involved in this have the same issues. As for access to the data: [http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/08/mcintyre\_versus\_jones\_climate\_1.html](http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/08/mcintyre_versus_jones_climate_1.html) > [@](#): > > Many of our readers will no doubt be aware of the long-standing dispute between Steve McIntyre and members of the climate science community whose data McIntyre is keen to get hold of. > > For those of you less familiar with the story, here’s some background. McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog, is best known for questioning the validity of the statistical analyses used to create the ‘hockey stick’ graph. The ‘hockey stick’ is the graph that illustrates the past 1000 years of climate based on palaeo proxy data and was published by Penn state climatologist Michael Mann and co-authors in Nature back in 1998. > > More recently, McIntyre has turned his attention to criticizing the quality of global temperature data held by institutes such as NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Several organizations worldwide collect and report global average temperature data for each month. Of these, a temperature data set held jointly by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter, known as HadCRU , extends back the farthest, beginning in 1850. > > Since 2002, McIntyre has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of CRU, for access to the HadCRU data. Although the data are made available in a processed gridded format that shows the global temperature trend, the raw station data are currently restricted to academics. While Jones has made data available to some academics, he has refused to supply McIntyre with the data. Between 24 July and 29 July of this year, CRU received 58 freedom of information act requests from McIntyre and people affiliated with Climate Audit. In the past month, the UK Met Office, which receives a cleaned-up version of the raw data from CRU, has received ten requests of its own. > > I’ve reported the full story for this week’s Nature, but here’s a breakdown, plus some details that didn’t make the cut. > > Why does McIntyre want the data? > Given McIntyre’s track record in critiquing data that comprise a significant part of the evidence for global warming, one might wonder whether he is in fact interested in having a go at reproducing the global temperature record. But McIntyre insists hat he’s not interested in challenging the science of climate change, or in nit-picking; rather he is simply asking that the “data be made available”. > > Why won’t Jones give McIntyre the data? > Jones says that he tried to help when he first received data requests from McIntyre back in 2002, but says that he soon became inundated with requests that he could not fulfill, or that he did not have the time to respond to. He says that, in some cases, he simply couldn’t hand over entire data sets because of long-standing confidentiality agreements with other nations that restrict their use. > > Although Jones agrees that the data should be made publicly available, he says that “it needs to be done in a systematic way”. He is now working to make the data publicly available online and will post a statement on the CRU website tomorrow to that effect, with any existing confidentiality agreements. “We’re trying to make them all available. We’re consulting with all the meteorological services – about 150 members of WMO – and will ask them if they are happy to release the data”, says Jones. But getting the all-clear from other nations could take several months and there may be objections. “Some countries don’t even have their own data available as they haven’t digitized it. We have done a lot of that ourselves”, he says. As I pointed before I see this mostly as an issue that can not be solved with unfunded mandates. > [@](#): > > What’s next? > Given that McIntyre’s wish for access to the data will take time to be granted, this dispute will likely continue for some time. He’s especially aggrieved by the fact that hurricane expert Peter Webster at Georgia Tech University was recently provided with data that had been refused to him. McIntyre’s point here is that he should be treated as a legitimate academic given his background and publication record. > > But Webster points out that he was allowed access because of the nature of his request, which was very specific and will result in a joint publication with Phil Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science”, says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped". > > Once the data become publicly available, Jones wants McIntyre to produce a global temperature record. “Science advances that way. He might then realize how robust the global temperature record is”, says Jones. Asked if he would take on the challenge, McIntyre said that it’s not a priority for him, but added “if someone wanted to hire me, I’d do it”. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/49 "2009-11-25T15:19:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Assuming all scientists are like in the emails you refer to is even worse. And putting words in my mouth is even worse. At no point did I say all scientists are like this. My comments were restricted to the shenanigans at CRU. As for the data… I don’t give a rat’s ass about their Feud with Steve McIntyre. These guys are talking about destroying critical data rather than comply with FOIA requests. That’s criminal behavior. The reason why don’t want the data released is because they think people will use it against them. This would not be a problem had this data and the source of the models been open all along. And frankly, after reading a number of the E-mails about the quality of the data, I think the larger issue is that their entire modeling enterprise is riddled with bad data, spaghetti code, and dubious corrections, some of which have made their way into the raw data sets so no one can even tell what the raw data is any more. It’s a mess, and they know it. CRU is not just some backwater climate center. These guys are strongly affiliated with the IPCC, and had a lot of input into the 4th assessment report. We are at the point now where politicians are demanding that the people pay trillions of dollars to avert AGW based in part on the work at CRU. There’s no way in hell that they should get to operate behind closed doors like this and issue scientific edicts that no one is allowed to question. At this point, I want to know how much of overall global warming science is contaminated by this. How much other work is derived in part from CRU’s results? There needs to be a commission set up to look at the state of the science, to track back other conclusions that used the paleoclimate data at CRU, and to figure out how to unwind this mess and clean up the data sets. At the same time, it should be demanding the immediate release of ALL data and ALL models that are being used to build the current consensus around AGW. The scientists on this commission should be at arm’s length from the current people doing the work, because another obvious problem is that there is an echo chamber and a ‘circle the wagons’ atmosphere among many global warming researchers. I don’t believe these leaks disprove AGW. But the error bars just increased. Before we make policy around the science, we have to re-establish exactly where the science is. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/50 "2009-11-25T15:40:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And putting words in my mouth is even worse. At no point did I say all scientists are like this. My comments were restricted to the shenanigans at CRU. Assuming that all the scientists at CRU are like that is not good either. It should be clear that I do not approve of anyone doing unethical things, but the current accusations are out of proportion. When someone says “I don’t give a rat ass” that is not a good reason to dismiss the context. And looking at your points and accusations: bad data, spaghetti code, you are referring to the hockey stick affair, and that already had hearings and investigations. > **[Hockey stick graph (global temperature)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy)** > > Hockey stick graphs present the global or hemispherical mean temperature record of the past 500 to 2000 years as shown by quantitative climate reconstructions based on climate proxy records. These reconstructions have consistently shown a slow long term cooling trend changing into relatively rapid warming in the 20th century, with the instrumental temperature record by 2000 exceeding earlier temperatures. > The term hockey stick graph was popularized by the climatologist Jerry Mahlman, to descri... > [@](#): > > National Research Council Report > > At the request of the U.S. Congress, a special “Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 2,000 Years” was assembled by the National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. The Committee consisted of 12 scientists from different disciplines and was tasked with explaining the current scientific information on the temperature record for the past two millennia, and identifying the main areas of uncertainty, the principal methodologies used, any problems with these approaches, and how central the debate is to the state of scientific knowledge on global climate change. > > The panel published its report in 2006.[29] The report agreed that there were statistical shortcomings in the MBH analysis, but concluded that they were small in effect. The report summarizes its main findings as follows:[30] > > ``` > * The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) during the 20th century is also reflected in borehole temperature measurements, the retreat of glaciers, and other observational evidence, and can be simulated with climate models. > * Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence and extent of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents. Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain. > * It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies. > * Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified. > * Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900 because of sparse data coverage and because the uncertainties associated with proxy data and the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods. > > ``` > > In response, a group-authored post on RealClimate, of which Mann is one of the contributors, stated, “the panel has found reason to support the key mainstream findings of past research, including points that we have highlighted previously.”[31] Similarly, according to Roger A. Pielke, Jr., the National Research Council publication constituted a “near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al.”;[32] Nature reported it as “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph.”[33] Or did you not notice that the stolen emails go back also to several years into the past? Many complaints ignore the status of storage technology from back then. Until you give us some cites I will have to guess that the critics are ignoring the latest reconstructions and research, AFAIK those have less problems with the data. ---
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/51 "2009-11-25T15:45:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There are clearly issues with the way that global warming research is carried out. That’s a great synopsis of the problems those emails exposed. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/52 "2009-11-25T16:25:10Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Credibility – or the lack – is the downside. You mean people might stop trusting scientists, which could have repercussions like 50+% of the population believing in creationism? Yeah, I can see why that would be a disaster. I only pray that never comes to pass. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/53 "2009-11-25T17:19:56Z")
Quoth **Scylla** : > [@](#): > > I guess another way of saying it Chronos is that defining what constitutes science by its conclusion rather than its process is what moves global warming from “science” to religion or politics. No, not at all, that’s mixing up cause and effect. Science follows the data, observation, and models, wherever they lead. In the case of climate, the data, observations, and models clearly lead to the conclusion that global warming is occurring, and it’s caused by human activities. Because of this, climate scientists agree about anthropogenic global warming. It’s not “the science is that there’s global warming because that’s what a consensus of scientists agree”, it’s “a consensus of scientists agree that there’s global warming because that’s what the science is”. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/54 "2009-11-25T17:29:43Z")
> [@Sinaijon](#): > > That’s a great synopsis of the problems those emails exposed. No, it’s not. It’s IMO a misrepresentation of what those email reveal, by cherry picking and using quotes out of context. There are issues, as in any significant endeavor, but nothing that rises to anything serious. In particular, these scientists have problems with the journal in question because the journal allowed faulty science to be published, not based on ideology. That’s what we want scientists to do, to self-police science. ---
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/55 "2009-11-25T18:03:43Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > these scientists have problems with the journal in question because the journal allowed faulty science to be published. Then all they needed to do was refute the science, not the journal. They weren’t able to do that, so they tried to suppress it. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/56 "2009-11-25T18:37:48Z")
When you find things like > [@Olga Solomina](#): > > 1. During a good half of the Holocene the glaciers were SMALLER than now. I attach here the figure with the same axes as at the Valerie’ picture (warmest/wettest periods), and the detailed comments on it. **To be “scientifically correct” we probably can shade these periods for the regions that we are presenting** at our figure (see a separate file “smaller than now” ). What is unusual about the modern retreat is the RATE, though we do not know much about the rate of the former retreat (again because of the lack of continuous records). it gets worrying. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/57 "2009-11-25T18:46:10Z")
Are the data and the models under discussion some kind of proprietary intellectual property? I always thought that part of the scientific method was the wide spread dissemination of data (and models) so that the results could be checked and reproduced…is this not the case with climate science as well? -XT ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/58 "2009-11-25T19:26:34Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What’s the actual downside, dare I ask? I mean, seriously, it’s not like AGW deniers are being fed to lions or anything. The downside is when someone uses AGW as justification to reach into my pocket and take money away from me. If humans are the cause of GW, then I can understand the justification. If we aren’t, then it’s wasted, and I much prefer to have the ability to decide on what to waste my money on. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/59 "2009-11-25T19:39:01Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Credibility – or the lack – is the downside. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > You mean people might stop trusting scientists, which could have repercussions like 50+% of the population believing in creationism? > > Yeah, I can see why that would be a disaster. I only pray that never comes to pass. It’s better to have 50% of the population distrust science and believe in creationism than to have 75% so inclined. I grant you that the first circumstance cannot be described as ideal. ---
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856/60 "2009-11-25T20:04:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > You mean people might stop trusting scientists, which could have repercussions like 50+% of the population believing in creationism? I understand that ignorance isn’t great, but you say that like society as a whole would suffer if that was the case. What specific problems would that cause? I’d bet that something like 90% of the population doesn’t know how gravity works, but I don’t see how that affects our daily life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-science/518856.md?page=4)