The Factual Argument Against Global Warming, Cap and Trade, and the Copenhagen Treaty

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 4:44am

Meh, one can stop just here, You are really getting nowhere by posting that as evidence. You are just swallowing a conspiracy and even **jshore **destroyed Douglas.

Nope, too silly.

One should not waste much time with this guy. In any case there are already good replies made by greenfry and others in his site, incidentally **Poptech ** here was noticed there too, the best comment:

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 4:57am

There is nothing to swallow unless of course you don’t believe the emails. No one has destroyed Douglas because no one has dared publish a criticism that allows him to respond.

Every point he made has been refuted. I see that you failed to provide one point and instead result to an off handed comment that is meaningless.

Absolutely nothing about the list has been refuted.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 5:12am

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12176750&postcount=51

jshore:

Since you bring up the Douglass paper, let’s discuss a little bit of the science behind it. What the Douglass paper purported to show is that the observed structure with height of the warming in the tropics was incompatible with model predictions. They did this by comparing the warming that had occurred with the standard error of the prediction made by many different models (some with multiple runs). [The “standard error” is essentially the standard deviation divided by the square root of number of model runs.]

To understand how boneheaded a mistake this is, it is useful to consider another experiment. Suppose, I toss a single die. Now suppose that I want to simulate this using a computer model. Since it is easy to do, I could very quickly run the simulation about 1 million times and determine that the mean value I got on tossing the die is something like 3.5000 +/- 0.0001 where the quoted uncertainty is the “standard error” in the mean. Using Douglass et al.'s logic, I would then conclude with essentially complete certainty that my model is incompatible with my experiment (because we all know very well that the die will come up with one of the integer values between 1 and 6 and any of these values are so far outside the quoted “uncertainty” range as to be astronomically improbable).

Of course, in Douglass et al., the number of model runs was not as dramatic…and there wasn’t this integer quantization that happens with dies that makes the absurdity of using the standard error like this quite so obvious. But, the basic problem is the same. (If you think that this problem only occurs when the average value doesn’t correspond to a possible value for an individual experiment, you can make the experiment be the tossing of two dies, in which case the mean value is to roll a 7. And, in fact, a 7 is the most likely value on a roll of two dies, but you will still get something else ~83.33% of the time.)

If I was in Douglass’s shoes…and had his determination to apparently not admit a mistake, I suppose I too might be trying to distract attention from the fact that my paper was an utter piece of crap by focusing instead on the private e-mails of scientists who were interested in publishing something to point out its obvious flaws.

So that was refuted by a guy that has been involved in the science and also reviewed papers.

As I said, no need to spend too much time with you when just the first bits of what you posted are clearly based on bad information.

BTW I did not mention your “great” evidence that debunks the Hockey stick, that is indeed evidence that has been shown to be misleading or obsolete.

IClaudius · March 20, 2010, 5:25am

An ad hominem attack must attack character over argument. To call skeptics of anthropogenic climate change ‘deniers’ doesn’t qualify as ad hominem just because you say so. I’m perfectly happy to admit that it’s a rhetorically loaded term, but you’ve provided no compelling basis for diagnosing its adoption as being due to its usefulness as a smear which rests wholly on the holocaust denial parallel. That’s an argument from revealed preferences, and it’s empirically unconvincing despite your few links.

Indeed, the blog in question has a specific page where the writer offers his opinion on the difference between ‘skeptics’, which he defines as those critics of the science who are nonetheless engaged in good faith science, even if they might be wrong, and those who are ‘deniers’. Obviously that distinction strongly suggests that at least this writer has adopted the ‘denier’ label with some specific threshold criteria in mind. Now, it may be that he applies the label too loosely, or inconsistently. But that’s a different criticism to just red flagging the usage.

This is kind of a glancing blow. E&E is obviously an academic journal, but it’s equally true that not all journals were created equal. Anyone who has done any kind of academic work knows that some journals are more credible than others. Some, like Nature or Nature Genetics, are established organs of science and it is very prestigious and coveted to get published in them. Whereas other journals are far less central to the forefront of scientific endeavour.

Suffice to say I’ve read a lot of climate scientists disparaging E&E as an pro-industry journal, and whatever the truth of those perceptions, it certainly isn’t regarded by anyone with the same status as Nature. Arguably its absence from the ISI Masters List reflects that.

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 5:40am

A forum post? Where is the published criticism? Can you link to the published criticism of the paper making that argument? Appeals to authority on a forum do not work and do not debunk anything.

You have not demonstrated this.

No it hasn’t.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 5:51am

It works both ways, in any case his points are sound. And clearly you are just stalling and denying that there are good reasons why Douglas was not allowed to publish.

His error committed when comparing the warming that had occurred with the standard error of the prediction made is enough to conclude that there were good reasons why the paper was rejected.

McIntire has not been able to refute the latest reconstructions. Those that you mention deal only with the ones from 2001 (and 2004?). As for the 2008 one, McIntyre had to resort to lies and innuendo.

The latest battle over the “hockey stick” has taken quite a turn, one that may finally lay to rest all the absurd claims of its demise made by contrarians (not to mention apparently libelous accusations of scientific malfeasance). In previous posts, we discussed climate blogger Steve McIntyre’s scurrilous accusations of “cherrypicking” against UK dendrochronolgist Keith Briffa, and summarized a a quick technical critique of McIntyre’s work by a dendrchronologist known as Delayed Oscillator.

Now comes new evidence that McIntyre’s accusations were completely false. And not only that, one of the Russian researchers who actually control the raw tree-ring data that McIntyre was mistakenly hounding Briffa for, has apparently confirmed that utilization of a newer more complete Yamal data set has no substantial effect on Briffa’s Yamal temperature reconstruction.

First let’s review the accusations from McIntyre, as best we have been able to discern them [Updated Oct. 7 to ensure it is understood these are the alleged actions]:

Briffa allegedly failed to disclose and archive raw tree-ring measurement data sets for several years, despite an obligation to do so by the data disclosure policies of the journals that published his work, such as Nature and Science.

Briffa (or someone else) allegedly cherrypicked the 17 live tree-ring core samples used for the modern period. (The term “cherrypicking”, of course, implies an intention to affect the result to match a preconceived notion, as seen at Wikipedia here and here. “Cherry picking can refer to the selection of data or data sets so a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to actuality”.)

Briffa also allegedly cherrypicked by failing to include other available tree-ring data from another site in the same region (the Schweingruber chronology from Khadyta River), even though he had combined more geographically disparate series in other cases where sample sizes were low. The “proper” chronology constructed from these two sites’ data makes the hockey stick “disappear”.

Now McIntyre has posted part of an email from one of the original Russian researchers, namely Rashit Hantemirov, that sheds new light on all of McIntyre’s contentions, to say the least. (The email was not written to McIntyre, but was forwarded to him by an anonymous correspondent).
Low number of used for reconstruction subfossil series is explained by standardisation method (“corridor method”). We had to select the longest series. The same concerns to living trees. There are not much old living trees in this area (in contrast to Polar Urals), therefore we used only 17 (not 12) samples from living trees. At that time we had close collaboration with CRU and I sent to Keith Briffa these raw data.

So, selection of samples has been made by me taking into account length of individual series as well as common requirements to increment cores (exclusion samples with compression wood, rotten wood etc.).

As to reliability of recent increase in tree growth – we have updated our data using many additional subfossil and living trees and using RCS-method. I.e. we used not only long series. Therefore many (120) living trees have been used. Finally, we have got almost the Briffa’s result. These results not published yet. I’m going to prepare paper at the end of this / beginning next year. Some preliminary data you can find in some kind of report in Russian

vak.ed.gov.ru/common/img/uploaded/files/vak/announcements/biolog/2009/13-07/KHantemirovRM.pdf

fig 2 – sample replication, fig 5 – temperature reconstruction (smoothed by three filters – 50-, 100- and 200-year) [Emphasis added]
As to the first accusation, it should be clear now if it weren’t already (as one Eli Rabett and dhogaza have both shown) that Briffa did not have control, or the right to distribute, the raw data. The data belonged to the Russians (Hantemirov and his co-author Shiyatov). Not only that, but it appears they may not have even let Briffa have the complete data set, only the samples they used in their own work. Why? It might be they had not yet published results using the complete data set, and were loathe to let Briffa do so before they did. But it could also be that not all the living tree samples were available before; the timeline for taking of the samples is not clear. Whatever the details, McIntyre has been clearly barking (and snarling) up the wrong tree, so to speak.

[Update, Oct. 8: It turns out that McIntyre had the Hantemirov raw data all along - since 2004 (h/t Craig Allen with more at Tim Lambert’s Deltoid)! To quote one Steve McIntyre: “You can’t make this stuff up”.]

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 5:52am

It is directly attacking character because no attempt to discern the argument is made. The term as used is an ad hominem. You are being intellectually dishonest to pretend it is not used as a smear.

He applies the definition in exactly the form I implied - a smear.

The argument is not about the popularity of the journal, the argument was whether it is peer-reviewed of not, E&E is clearly peer-reviewed. “Credibility” is subjective. Regardless E&E is not a pure science journal as it discusses the politics of the AGW debate as well which is why it is clearly stated as an interdisciplinary academic journal, so comparisons to Nature are absurd.

I’ve only seen the same handful of alarmist scientists who have made these comments. ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) is owned by the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters corporation and offers commercial database services similar to other companies services such EBSCO’s “Academic Search” and Elsevier’s “Scopus”.

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:02am

There is no evidence his points are sound. If they are he should have them published. Your declaration of them does not make it so. I didn’t stall I provided the direct link to the evidence, now unless you are saying the emails are true which the scientists who wrote them do not do.

Yes he has, he published a criticism of the most recent one,

Proxy inconsistency and other problems in millennial paleoclimate reconstructions (PDF)
*(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 106, Number 6, February 2009)

Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick*

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 6:04am

Nope, sourcewatch.org also has their number:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Energy_and_Environment

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:10am

Yes of course the always “credible” sourcewatch,

Sourcewatch

$$$ Funded by The Center for Media and Democracy

Sourcewatch (Discover the Networks)

Center for Media and Democracy (Discover the Networks)

An anti-capitalist, anti-corporate organization that seeks to expose right-wing “public relations spin and propaganda”.

In CMD’s view, capitalism generally, and corporations in particular, are the principal root causes of societal ills in the U.S. and abroad. The Capital Research Center, which rates the ideological leanings of nonprofit organizations, places CMD near the extreme far left of the spectrum. The website ActivistCash, which provides “information about the funding source[s] of radical anti-consumer organizations and activists,” characterizes CMD as “a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization.” […]

CMD was founded by the leftist writer and environmental activist John Stauber, who continues to serve as the Center’s Executive Director. Stauber began his activism in high school when he organized anti-Vietnam War protests and early Earth Day events. The co-author (with SourceWatch founder Sheldon Rampton) of six books, Stauber created the now-defunct website Vote2StopBush.org. He is also an unpaid advisor to several organizations, including the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Center for Food Safety, the Liberty Tree Foundation, the Media Education Foundation, and the Organic Consumers Association.

The aforementioned Sheldon Rampton currently serves as CMD’s Research Director. A graduate of Princeton University, Rampton was formerly an outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua, a group established in 1984 to oppose President Reagan’s efforts to stop the spread of Communism in Central America, and currently dedicated to promoting a leftist vision of “social justice in Nicaragua through alternative models of development and activism.”

An April 2001 commentary in the liberal publication Village Voice said of Rampton and Stauber: “These guys come from the far side of liberal.”

Center for Media & Democracy (Activist Cash)

The Center for Media & Democracy (CMD) is a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization. CMD isn’t really a center it would be more accurate to call it a partnership, since it is essentially a two-person operation.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate, as do most self-anointed progressive watchdogs, from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. In their own quarterly PR Watch newsletter, they recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 6:15am

That is not the way it works sparky, you need to show why it is not sound, even if that was coming from a high school boy you need to tell us at least a hint of why his points are not valid.

I did not say that, but in any case, they are not evidence of a conspiracy.

A Climatology Conspiracy? More “peer-review abuse” accusations

Mr. Pearce also investigates a more recent issue. He implies that I abused the normal peer-review system, and exerted pressure on the editor of the International Journal of Climatology to delay publication of the print version of a paper by Professor David Douglass and colleagues. This is not true.

The Douglass et al. paper was published in December 2007 in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. The “et al.” included the same Professor S. Fred Singer who had previously accused me of “scientific cleansing”. It also included Professor John Christy, the primary developer of a satellite-based temperature record which suggests that there has been minimal warming of Earth’s lower atmosphere since 1979. Three alternate versions of the satellite temperature record, produced by different teams of researchers using the same raw satellite measurements, all indicate substantially more warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The focus of the Douglass et al. paper was on post-1979 temperature changes in the tropics. The authors devised what they called a “robust statistical test” to compare computer model results with observations. The test was seriously flawed (see Appendix A in Open Letter to the Climate Science Community: Response to A “Climatology Conspiracy?”). When it was applied to the model and observational temperature datasets, the test showed (quite incorrectly) that the model results were significantly different from observations.

As I have noted elsewhere, the Douglass et al. paper immediately attracted considerable media and political attention. One of the paper’s authors claimed that it represented an “inconvenient truth”, and proved that “Nature, not humans, rules the climate”. These statements were absurd. No single study can overturn the very large body of scientific evidence supporting “discernible human influence” findings. Nor does any individual study provide the sole underpinning for the conclusion that human activities are influencing global climate.

Given the extraordinary claims that were being made on the basis of this incorrect paper, my colleagues and I decided that a response was necessary. Although the errors in Douglass et al. were easy to identify, it required a substantial amount of new and original work to repeat the statistical analysis properly.

Our work went far beyond what Douglass et al. had done. We looked at the sensitivity of model-versus-data comparisons to the choice of statistical test, to the test assumptions, to the number of years of record used in the tests, and to errors in the computer model estimates of year-to-year temperature variability. We also examined how the statistical test devised by Douglass et al. performed under controlled conditions, using random data with known statistical properties. From their paper, there is no evidence that Douglass et al. considered any of these important issues before making their highly-publicized claims.

Our analysis clearly showed that tropical temperature changes in observations and climate model simulations were not fundamentally inconsistent – contrary to the claim of Douglass and colleagues. Our research was published on October 10, 2008, in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. On November 15, 2008, the Douglass et al. and Santer et al. papers appeared in the same print version of the International Journal of Climatology.

In December 2009, shortly after the public release of the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professors David Douglass and John Christy accused me of leading a conspiracy to delay publication of the print version of the Douglass et al. paper. This accusation was based on a selective analysis of the stolen emails. It is false.

In Mr. Pearce’s account of this issue, he states that “There is no doubt the (sic) Santer and his colleagues sought to use the power they held to the utmost…” So what are the facts of this matter? What is the “power” Fred Pearce is referring to?
* Fact 1: The only “power” that I had was the power to choose which scientific journal to submit our paper to. I chose the International Journal of Climatology. I did this because the International Journal of Climatology had published (in their online edition) the seriously flawed Douglass et al. paper. I wanted to give the journal the opportunity to set the scientific record straight.
* Fact 2: I had never previously submitted a paper to the International Journal of Climatology. I had never met the editor of the journal (Professor Glenn McGregor). I did not have any correspondence or professional interaction with the editor prior to 2008.
* Fact 3: Prior to submitting our paper, I wrote an email to Dr. Tim Osborn on January 10, 2008. Tim Osborn was on the editorial board of the International Journal of Climatology. I told Dr. Osborn that, before deciding whether we would submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology, I wanted to have some assurance that our paper would “be regarded as an independent contribution, not as a comment on Douglass et al.” This request was entirely reasonable in view of the substantial amount of new work that we had done. I have described this new work above.
* Fact 4: I did not want to submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology if there was a possibility that our submission would be regarded as a mere “comment” on Douglass et al. Under this scenario, Douglass et al. would have received the last word. Given the extraordinary claims they had made, I thought it unlikely that their “last word” would have acknowledged the serious statistical error in their original paper. As subsequent events showed, I was right to be concerned – they have not admitted any error in their work.
* Fact 5: As I clearly stated in my email of January 10 to Dr. Tim Osborn, if the International Journal of Climatology agreed to classify our paper as an independent contribution, “Douglass et al. should have the opportunity to respond to our contribution, and we should be given the chance to reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side…”
* Fact 6: The decision to hold back the print version of the Douglass et al. paper was not mine. It was the editor’s decision. I had no “power” over the publishing decisions of the International Journal of Climatology.
This whole episode should be filed under the category “No good deed goes unpunished”. My colleagues and I were simply trying to set the scientific record straight. There was no conspiracy to subvert the peer-review process. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are easy to disseminate. Many are willing to accept these theories at face value. The distribution of facts on complex scientific issues is a slower, more difficult process.

That seems to be just a letter, not a published paper, are you sure that is what you wants us to assume it is a published paper?

In any case, I do not trust McIntyre at all.

Climate Auditing – Close Encounters with Mr. Steven McIntyre

Ten days after the online publication of our International Journal of Climatology paper, Mr. Steven McIntyre, who runs the “ClimateAudit” blog, requested all of the climate model data we had used in our research. I replied that Mr. McIntyre was welcome to “audit” our calculations, and that all of the primary model data we had employed were archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and freely available to any researcher. Over 3,400 scientists around the world currently analyze climate model output from this open database.

My response was insufficient for Mr. McIntyre. He submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for climate model data – not for the freely available raw data, but for the results from intermediate calculations I had performed with the raw data. One FOIA request also asked for two years of my email correspondence related to these climate model data sets.

I had performed these intermediate calculations in order derive weighted-average temperature changes for different layers of the atmosphere. This is standard practice. It is necessary since model temperature data are available at specific heights in the atmosphere, whereas satellite temperature measurements represent an average over a deep layer of the atmosphere. The weighted averages calculated from the climate model data can be directly compared with actual satellite data. The method used for making such intermediate calculations is not a secret. It is published in several different scientific journals.

Unlike Mr. McIntyre, David Douglass and his colleagues (in their International Journal of Climatology paper) had used the freely available raw model data. With these raw datasets, Douglass et al. made intermediate calculations similar to the calculations we had performed. The results of their intermediate calculations were similar to our own intermediate results. The differences between what Douglass and colleagues had done and what my colleagues and I had done was not in the intermediate calculations – it was in the statistical tests each group had used to compare climate models with observations.

The punch-line of this story is that Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests were completely unnecessary. In my opinion, they were frivolous. Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the information necessary to check our calculations and our findings.

When I invited Mr. McIntyre to “audit” our entire study, including the intermediate calculations, and told him that all the data necessary to perform such an “audit” were freely available, he expressed moral outrage on his blog. I began to receive threatening emails. Complaints about my “stonewalling” behavior were sent to my superiors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the U.S. Department of Energy.

A little over a month after receiving Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests, I decided to release all of the intermediate calculations I had performed for our International Journal of Climatology paper. I made these datasets available to the entire scientific community. I did this because I wanted to continue with my scientific research. I did not want to spend all of my available time and energy responding to harassment incited by Mr. McIntyre’s blog.

Mr. Pearce does not mention that Mr. McIntyre had no need to file Freedom of Information Act requests, since Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the raw climate model data we had used in our study (and to the methods we had used for performing intermediate calculations). Nor does Mr. Pearce mention the curious asymmetry in Mr. McIntyre’s “auditing”. To my knowledge, Mr. McIntyre – who purports to have considerable statistical expertise – has failed to “audit” the Douglass et al. paper, which contained serious statistical errors.

As the “Climategate” emails clearly show, there is a pattern of behavior here. My encounter with Mr. McIntyre’s use of FOIA requests for “audit” purposes is not an isolated event. In my opinion, Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA requests serve the purpose of initiating fishing expeditions, and are not being used for true scientific discovery.

Mr. McIntyre’s own words do not present a picture of a man engaged in purely dispassionate and objective scientific inquiry:
“But if Santer wants to try this kind of stunt, as I’ve said above, I’ve submitted FOI requests and we’ll see what they turn up. We’ll see what the journal policies require. I’ll also see what DOE and PCDMI administrators have to say. We’ll see if any of Santer’s buddies are obligated to produce the data. We’ll see if Santer ever sent any of the data to his buddies”
(Steven McIntyre; posting on his ClimateAudit blog; Nov. 21, 2008).

My research is subject to rigorous scrutiny. Mr. McIntyre’s blogging is not. He can issue FOIA requests at will. He is the master of his domain – the supreme, unchallenged ruler of the “ClimateAudit” universe. He is not a climate scientist, but he has the power to single-handedly destroy the reputations of exceptional men and women who have devoted their entire careers to the pursuit of climate science. Mr. McIntyre’s unchecked, extraordinary power is the real story of “Climategate”. I hope that someone has the courage to tell this story.

Benjamin D. Santer

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 6:21am

So then I just need to check who is more accurate, no?

So what do we see Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen doing with E&E?

Recently an article by E-G. Beck has been wafting through the Internet and has now been ‘published’ by Energy and Environment which challenges all these findings or, more precisely, ignores the last 50 years of carbon cycle research [Curiously, this journal always seems happy to ennoble even the strangest idea with the scientific label: “peer reviewed”]. Beck’s approach is very simple: He decided from the beginning that Keeling and Callendar obviously are ideological fanatics and that finally all chemical measurements in the 19th and early 20th century actually were fine. Great news of course!

So what does the new CO2 “reconstruction” look like? For example, within 15 years CO2 levels rose from about 290ppm (1925) to about 470ppm (1942). Worse, within only 10 years these huge CO2 levels were absorbed again and came back to boring mainstream values of about 300ppm.

The list of arguments against such variability in the carbon cycle is too long even for a post on RC but here are a few of the main ones:
* The fluxes necessary to produce such variations are just unbelievably huge. Modern fossil fuel emissions are about 7.5GT (Giga Tons) Carbon per year which would correspond to about 3.5ppm increase per year (except that about half is absorbed by natural sinks in the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere). Beck’s supposed 150ppm source/sink in a decade corresponds therefore to a CO2 production/absorption about ten times stronger than the entire global industrial production of 2007 (putting aside for the moment additional complications since such CO2 levels had to be equilibrated at least partly with the ocean and the real CO2 source must even be larger).
* Such huge biospheric fluxes would leave an enormous 13C signal in the atmosphere. Nothing remotely like that is observed in tree ring cellulose data.
* Beck makes an association of some of the alleged huge CO2 peaks with volcanic eruptions. The Mauna Loa CO2 record started by Charles Keeling 1955 (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo145e_thrudc04.pdf ) however doesn’t show much variability associated with the big eruptions of El Chichon, Agung or Pinatubo. (Readers should know however that on much longer, geologic, timescales, CO2 levels are heavily influenced by volcanic and tectonic activity, but that is not important on the interannual (or even centennial) timescale).
* The paper suggests that the CO2 peak in the 1940 is forced by the first temperature rise in the 20th century. That would make 150ppm due to a temperature shift of 0.4°C. What happened then with the next rise from the 1970s to today? The observed about 0.5°C rise corresponded to “only” 70ppm always assuming that fossil fuel combustion does not leave any remains in the atmosphere…. ;)
* And most importantly, we know from ice core analysis the CO2 concentration from the pre-industrial to modern times. The results of three different Antarctic cores broadly confirm the picture of an accelerating rise of CO2 above levels of natural variability over the last 650.000 years.
This paper has already received some appropriately critical reviews (particularly from Rabett Run here and
here) and oddly was very warmly received by Lyndon LaRouche. We will try to refrain from drawing any conclusions from this…

The last question to answer is how on earth Beck’s paper could survive a half-decent review process from anyone who knows any of this history. But this is a question best posed to the Editorial board of Energy and Environment and its Editor, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.

I give the more credible vote to Source watch.

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:24am

So science does not now work via peer-review? Now you just take forum posts as criticism? I don’t have to refute every ridiculous comment made on a forum. What kind of insanity is that? If the criticism is legitimate about the paper it would be published. So since your boy allegedly knows all about publishing, have at it! And get back to me when you can produce a published criticism.

It is certainly evidence of corruption of the peer-review process.

As for “RealClimate”,

The Truth about RealClimate.org

Strawman, is it a published criticism?

Of course you don’t - you “trust” scientists who do not want to share their data, methods and sourcecode.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 6:33am

Translation: I don’t have a clue how to answer.

Just your unreliable say so.

And made by Popular Tech. No relation eh? Using the same source of your volley to attempt to discredit a source managed by climate scientists is really silly.

I’m just saying, it is not a published paper, what remains is that McIntyre has no proper reply to the later reconstructions, only lies and innuendo.

And you got that from what denier source?

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:37am

Allowing a discussion of a paper,

180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods (PDF)
*(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 2, pp. 259-282, March 2007)

Ernst-Georg Beck*
Comment on “180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods” by ernst-georg beck (DOC)
*(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 635-646, September 2007)
Harro A.J. Meijer, Ralph F. Keeling *
Comments on “180 years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods” (PDF)
*(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 641-646, September 2007)
Ernst-Georg Beck*

The only problem I am sure for you is that Beck got to respond.

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:46am

Translation: You don’t have any published criticism.

No it is detailed and supported here,

A Climatology Conspiracy? (American Thinker)

Who is RealClimate.org’s Registrant Organization?

He published his reply in the proper journal and can support everything he stated.

LMAO! That is not for the papers in question. FYI Gavin only put that up after Climategate broke and Dr. Jones got caught illegally refusing FOIA requests.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 6:48am

Meh, unconvincing still.

Poptech · March 20, 2010, 6:54am

You being “convinced” of the conclusions of the paper is irrelevant to the paper being peer-reviewed and the journal allowing open discussion - both of which it does. You still have nothing.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 7:07am

No need to, enough people can see that you are not capable of even pointing out where **jshore **is wrong, it just shows that it is safe to ignore your points until better evidence appears that you can weight evidence properly.

That is no evidence, just opinion and emails devoid of context.

Meaningless, the fact remains that the contributors of RealClimate do manage to publish in the most prestigious journals.

No he can’t. He was incapable of even changing the official position of the scientific organization that published his papers.

Before digging your hole more, you need a cite for your accusation that all that came only after Climategate broke.

You also need a Cite for the declaration that Dr. Jones got caught illegally refusing FOIA requests.

The last one is peculiar because the investigation has not been completed and in any case data was released or it could be obtained elsewhere.

GIGObuster · March 20, 2010, 7:10am

You must be confusing the defeat of a poster in a message board with a significant objective.

Uh no, in reality your side is the one that has virtually nothing, it needs to convince enough people in scientific organizations to declare that AGW is not happening, last time I checked you can not find any scientific organization whose position is that we should not worry at all. Maybe you can?