"Newsweek" cover story exposes well-funded global-warming denial machine

Great Debates
141

intention, just wanted to drop in and compliment you on your performance in this thread, especially the references. I’ve taken up the cudgel on this issue in previous threads . And by this issue I mean the precise scientific standing of AGW, whether it has been “proven” as so often claimed and whether all “deniers” are industry shills and all proponents are pure-as-the-driven-snow scientists working against terrible pressure from the opposition.

In particular your figures on how much money is donated to to AGW proponents by private industry is astonishing. Does anyone have any figures on how much more money AGW proponents recieve compared to “deniers”?

Keep up the good work.

142

Personally, I think he has a point here, especially since I have yet to come across someone who could actually show me any proof that there was an actual hole in the ozone layer, only a depleted amount measured over Mount Pinatubo during the eighties and just after an eruption from it. If I understand correctly, the sun creates ozone, which means that to destroy the ozone layer, you’d need to destroy the sun, and that depleted levels of ozone are generally caused by volcanic eruptions spewing ozone depleting chemicals into the atmosphere in a concentrated location. So that mother nature’s attack on her own atmosphere far out measures our own collective ability to do the same and the atmosphere still rebounded. On its own.

I’m not attempting to stir anyone up. This is simply what I understand about the situation and any data to the contrary would be greatly appreciated. Someone interested in setting me straight could start by providing evidence that such a hole existed in the first place (we know there isn’t one now). This may need to continue in another thread, so as not to further hijack this one.

143

Blake, thank you for your kind comments.

For me, though, the amount of money given to each side is immaterial. There are estimates that the US has spent $50 billion on climate research over the last decade. Much of this has been spent by AGW proponents looking for the “smoking gun”, the proof that CO2 was having a significant effect.

But whether a dollar or a billion has been spent looking to establish some hypothesis means little. Either the hypothesis is correct or not, regardless of the dollars spent. That’s why the discussion of funding is meaningless.

It is of interest, however, how little the billions have bought us. The most recent IPCC report says little more than the original report. Levels of scientific understanding have not changed much (although the IPCC has disguised that by dropping a variety of forcings from their discussion in the Summary for Policymakers). Uncertainty estimates are not much different. Fifty billion spent, and we haven’t moved very far.

To me, this lack of results despite billions spent is a clear indication of the difficult, intractable, complex nature of the problem. It is not suited to a solution using any of our common tools. It far exceeds the computational capacity of even our largest computers. Climate is an optimally turbulent constructal terawatt scale global heat engine, and we simply do not have the ability to model it in anything but the most simplified of terms. Heck, even modeling very simple turbulent systems is difficult, and this is the largest, most complicated, least understood turbulent system that we’ve ever tried to model. 100 year climate forecasts? Give me a break …

It is this intractability that leads to the huge range of model results. Given the same inputs, one model will predict a 1° rise in temperature, while another will predict 5°, and there is not a scientist on the planet that can scientifically show that one result is more likely than the other.

Given the complexity of the problem and the paucity of our understanding, the almost obsessive, quasi-religious push to declare a “consensus” that we understand the climate is as anti-scientific a stance as I can imagine.

In addition, the current state of climate science is a shame and a disgrace. Why should Steve McIntyre have to ask and ask James Hansen and his associates for things like data and computer code? Our taxes, yours and mine, have paid Mr. Hansen’s substantial salary. We bought him the computers, and paid the programmers to do his bidding. The computer code is not his to hide. We bought it, it is public property, and he is churlishly, childishly, and in the long run very foolishly refusing to reveal it.

Which, of course, brings up the obvious question … why is he refusing to reveal the code for calculating the temperature?

Well, I will leave you to form your own answers to that question …

w.

144

Kimstu, looking over my responses noticed that I had not responded to your point about Branson. I had thought his money went to funding AGW, but as you point out, he is going to give it to support alternative energy research. So you are 100% correct about Branson, he’s not a good example.

A better example is Greenpeace. When I lived in Fiji, a number of us became concerned about the rampant overfishing by foreign companies in Fijian waters. My friend went to Greenpeace to ask them to help us fight for the fish … they said they couldn’t help the fish, because they were spending all their money fighting global warming …

Now Greenpeace’s budget worldwide in 2001 was $191 million dollars, of which a large proportion went to making them a “well funded global warming affirmation machine”. Why isn’t Newsweek excoriating them for putting their considerable financial resources behind one side of this debate, while Exxon gets sh*t all the time for supporting the other side?

(Ironically, the first Google result for “Greenpeace climate change” is headlined STOP CLIMATE CHANGE/GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL … stop climate change? Shall we stop tectonic drift, while we’re at it? Climate has always changed, and always will, only Greenpeace could pitch an ad campaign based around the slogan that we could stop it. Your $191 million dollars at work.)

I have been involved in the climate discussion for years. The overwhelming majority of the sceptical scientists that I correspond with have never received a dime from Exxon. Nor have I. Meanwhile, James Hanson takes a cool quarter million from Mrs. John Kerry … but that’s perfectly fine with you, I guess. Anyone who takes a dime from Exxon is suddenly a “paid shill for the oil industry”, but James Hanson gets a free pass …

You guys have a hard time marshalling facts (not computer model results, but facts) to support your position, so you stoop to attacking people who support one side of the argument, while ignoring people who support the other side. To me, that only reveals your desperation. It’s like your constant harping on “consensus” … don’t you see how weak that makes you look?

Me, I could care less who funds who, or which side has more people who agree with them. I’m interested in a very different question, which is, what are the correct answers about climate change? If your side stopped worrying about trivialities like who’s funding who, and stopped spending time endlessly repeating your humorous claims of “consensus”, you’d have more time to devote to the real questions.

w.

145

Update: It’s just come out that the Bush Administration has also drafted the World Bank into the service of GW denial:

146

This makes no sense, even with the correction the graphs still show the issue is still there, the fact is this error was acknowledged and yet the overall trend remains, shows that this is indeed much ado about very little, only if I had see them hiding the error I would accept your idea that they are sleep at the wheel and that they can not be trusted, as it is, what you are attributing to Gavin is indeed just demonizing and attacking the messenger, something that you claim is not a good thing to do.

Also the overall point of money to outfits to greenpeace makes no sense too, they are not doing research.

147

This IMHO is showing that something is amiss, how did McIntyre found the error if not by looking at the data?

IOW, aren’t the deniers just exaggerating the conspiracy level of not having access to the data? If the data is not available then I would expect the “official point” not needing to change at all and do a “the show must go on act” as it is, changing the tables and records based on the error found shows integrity to me, the fact that it does not change the overall point makes the current effort to make this a big deal is what is pathetic.

148

While the Hansen data is available, the code is not, and many other researchers such as HadCRUT have not revealed either the data or the code.

And how exactly does it show “integrity” to agree that you’ve made a mistake? He didn’t have much option, the mistake was obvious and there was nothing he could do to deny it.

Now, if Hansen would reveal the computer code that you and I paid for and that he’s refusing to make public, would that show integrity?

Heck, no, that would be just common scientific practice. You don’t get bonus points for doing what you are supposed to do.

Refusing to reveal it as he has done, however, shows a definite lack of integrity.

w.

149

Say what? I never said Greenpeace did research. Greenpeace is just a “well funded global warming affirmation machine”. How come you approve of funding for one side of the debate and not the other?

w.

150

Talk about missing the obvious: it is clear the data was available and the overall result was replicated on the way to finding the error, IOW the point of the computer code not being available is a silly smoke screen.

151

No you never did, but i’m just saying.

Getting money for affirming something is not the same as getting funding for attempting to discredit evidence already found, which is the subject of this thread.

More smoke screens…

152

If you believe this, you’ve obviously never tried to replicate the results of a study.

  1. While it is sometimes possible to reverse engineer the code that they are using if their code is 100% correct, if they have made any errors it is not possible.

  2. Without the code, some incorrect procedures may be masked by other correct procedures, and not be discoverable.

  3. The lack of the code makes it very slow and difficult to discover if there are errors.

This all misses the central issue, however. Science is about transparency and replicability. While one error has been found, Hansen’s refusal to reveal the code makes it hard or impossible to find all of the errors that may have been made.

Hansen’s work is publicly funded, and has no commercial value or business secrets. He’s asking us to risk billions of dollars on his results, but he won’t say how he got the results.

You keep thinking that we need to come up with reasons for him to reveal the code, but the opposite is true. He is obligated by both scientific practice and public disclosure laws to reveal the code, unless he can come up with some sound reason not to.

Perhaps you could let us know what you think that sound reason for hiding his work might be?

w.

153

Give it up, that was no code but data.

They did anyhow.

Once again, they did. And the bottom line remains: the overall conclusion showed up again.

The thing that you keep missing is that the slight error, after an attempt to find an even bigger error, ends up confirming the early research.

The simplest reason: the data is available, Hansen got results, someone replicated the effort with different coding, and ended virtually confirming what Hansen got.

The point of “hiding the code” is moot and it remains a smoke screen.

154

Perhaps the most important point in Hansen’s data (now with corrections of very minor errors) is that the last 13 years have been the hottest (average temperature) in recorded history.

155

There seem to be several misunderstandings here. The first one is that what Hanson is reporting is raw data of some sort.

It is not. Hanson’s gridded global temperature dataset is the result of a number of computer operations on individual station data. What computer operations? Well … we don’t know, do we, because Hanson won’t reveal the computer code.

This is another misunderstanding. While an error was discovered, other errors (which I called “some incorrect procedures” above) may exist which have not been discovered. And without access to the code, those errors may not be discoverable. The fact that one error was discovered means nothing about the other possible errors.

Clearly, you think that since one error has been discovered, none remain. Perhaps you could let us know how you determined this.

Confirming the early research? After years of saying “1998 was the warmest year ever in the US”, we now find that the warmest year in the US was 1934. Please let us know how that “confirms” the previous finding that 1998 was the warmest year.

Oh, I see. To you, transparency in science means that if you hide your code, and as a result someone can only find obvious errors in your work, you are therefore justified in hiding your code … please tell me you’re not a scientist.

You see, the way this “science” thing works is that

  1. A scientist uses some procedure to come up with a result.

  2. The scientist publishes his procedures and data.

  3. Other scientists examine his work, to see if they can find any errors in either the procedures or the results.

  4. If they cannot find any errors, the work is considered to be established, until such time as may be overturned in the future.

Now, this funny thing called “science” can only work if the scientist publishes both the procedures (mathematical steps, laboratory procedures, computer code, etc.) and the data. Absent that, we are left with an apocryphal claim of unknown validity.

Your idea that if no one can find an error in work whose procedures are kept hidden, that inability to discover errors thus justifies the hiding of the procedures, is completely backwards from the way science actually works.

w.

156

I’ll keep this in mind the next time we have a discussion about how evil Diebold is.

157

So I’m told that there was a huge error in “NASA global warming data” (E-Sabbath)

“that was discovered by Steven McIntyre, the man the warmers love to hate because he demolished the Hockeystick.” (intention)

I go about wasting my damn time looking for the error and not finding anything because I foolishly took the claim at face value and included words like “global” and “earth” in my search and find nothing. After which, intention has the gall to say

“you’re not doing your homework.”

I finally find out that this revision only pertains only to the contiguous US AND the contiguous US data still shows consistently rising temps AND the global data still very much resembles the hockey stick (intention’s term, my spelling).

Yet I come back here to find intention still puffing up his chest about this and crowing as if he has put a nail in the coffin of the myth of global warming. Wow, the height of the dust bowl was barely warmer than today (not worldwide though.) That really changes things. But of course one (not huge) error is evidence of more, right?

There’s a lot yammering about what science is here. You know what? I think scientists publish papers in credible scientific, peer-reviewed publications like Nature. I don’t think science is writing a one-sided blog or implying nefarious motives at NASA and media conspiracies. If the doubters have the goods then they should publish them in real scientific journals.

I hope no lurkers here are being swayed by the nonsense people in denial can spew. Doesn’t it remind you of the creationist arguments you hear? No amount of evidence is enough. The church of denial can discount anything. Rising global temperatures closely correlated to CO2 levels? Shrinking polar ice? Rising ocean levels? Shifting animal migrations? Stronger hurricanes? On and on and on. None of it can penetrate the dogma. This isn’t healthy skepticism it’s dangerous intransigence that props up the interests of those who wish to perpetuate the damaging practices causing this problem. And it does matter that those interests fund so much of the obfuscation machine that flies in the face not only of NASA, but of a vast array of credible scientific organizations around the globe. The whole globe that is, not just 1.5 % of it.

158

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159

Please give a citation to any place where I said that Hanson’s error “put a nail in the coffin of the myth of global warming”. I have not claimed that anywhere. I also don’t think I said it applied to anything but the US.

Regarding my claim that you were not doing your homework, you say the problem was

Unfortunately, the facts don’t support this flimsy excuse. The very first citation in this thread to the error in Hansen’s data (post #109) gave as the cite a web page saying:

“US temperature data” … that’s kind of a clue, don’t you think? But since that cite didn’t satisfy you, I provided you (post #119) with another citation to Roger Pielke’s web site, where the title of the thread was “GISS Has Reranked US Temperature Anomalies” You do notice the “US” in there, don’t you?

Since you couldn’t figure out from those cites that the error relates to US rather than global data … you weren’t doing your homework. Claiming that you were searching for “global” data instead of US data only proves that you didn’t read the citations.

Finally, many scientific studies which do not agree with the prevailing AGW claims have been published. But for the AGW camp, somehow these don’t count. NASA itself thinks that changes in land use/land cover may have had more effect than CO2 on the climate … but that just gets swept under the pro-AGW rug.

I find the AGW camp to be much closer to the creationists than the skeptics are. The AGW camp believes in the revealed wisdom, uses claims like “consensus” to support their position, and ignores scientific studies showing anything they don’t believe in.

Finally, regarding whether the changes in the US data are important, let me quote James Hansen :

So you can argue that an error in the US temperature data doesn’t matter … but James Hansen disagrees with you.

w.

160

Of course there is a paper trail to go back and count later with a different method, no? (actually your point is very helpful to show how silly to be hung up on the code, checking results with a different method is done also in science)

As for **Intension ** the point stands, clearly the point is that the overall warming trend remains, jumping up and down about some extremes is less scientific really.

If the data used was not the same I would expect even bigger discrepancies, I would also expect the numbers obtained not to be compatible if we still assume the error finders did not do something similar to the original research, as it is, the error that was found could be then plugged in to make the charts more accurate, acknowledging the error was important, making a molehill out of an anthill, not much.