Climate wars revisited: Finally, does evidence matter in science?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 12, 2015

Climate change, News}

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A friend asks us to notice again science writer Matt Ridley’s complaint about the Climate Wars’ Damage to Science, quoting:

The great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses tested — or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I see bad ideas can persist for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they become intolerant dogmas.

Previous notice here.

To some of us, the biggest problem was the wholesale manipulation of data, as in Climategate and data fudging.

We were used to this with Darwinism, etc., but then some people began doing it with stuff your nephew or your granny should care about.

Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista

Comments

Zachriel Get this into your head once and for all. There is no such thing as man made global warming..... Seriously you are the most superstitious, gullible and by far the most ignorant troll I've ever met on a forum.Andre_{July 13, 2015
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"the reduced solar activity wouldn’t outweigh the expected effects of anthropogenic global warming" I can tell from my own daily observations of solar activity that AGW can't prevent it from getting colder. When it gets colder, it gets colder, and no Warmer Scare Stories seem to affect it. Andrewasauber_{July 13, 2015
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Virgil Cain: Some scientists are predicting that an ice age will begin in 15 years- ‘Mini ice age’ coming in next fifteen years, new model of the Sun’s cycle shows That is incorrect. The study found that solar activity will be at a minimum similar to the Little Ice Age, but not that it will lead to a mini ice age. Per the author of the solar study, Valentina Zharkova, the reduced solar activity wouldn’t outweigh the expected effects of anthropogenic global warming. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/150711_sunspots.htmZachriel_{July 13, 2015
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"the actual sea-level rise even worse than it appears" The actual sea-level rise is nothing compared to the scary story-level rise. Andrewasauber_{July 13, 2015
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This is a great piece from the Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/15/stephen-moore-climate-change-not-settled-science/ringo_{July 13, 2015
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Bornagain77, Great video! Dr Don Easterbrook Exposes Climate Change Hoax – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LkMweOVOOI Thanks! -QQuerius_{July 12, 2015
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I ask again..... Why do materialists care so much about it? If there is no reason for the existence of the human race and extinctions are part and parcel of the universe why on earth do you care?Andre_{July 12, 2015
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Born Again - As you can tell I do not follow it much either. And I agree about the militant atheist!ringo_{July 12, 2015
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BA77:
Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.” “That is what he said. That is a ridiculous statement,” Giaever explained.,,, “How can he say that? I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” he added.
Obama is indeed clever but he's not getting bad advice. He's obviously part of the scam, just like the Pope and the others. It seems as if world leaders dance to an invisible flute, a hidden but powerful authority.Mapou_{July 12, 2015
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Of related interest is this recent article:
“Deniers” in their midst – All is not well in Nobel Prize Land - Anthony Watts - July 7, 2015 Excerpt: Today, one of the nobel laureates who was an attendee has spoken out.,,, Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘Global warming is a non-problem’ ‘I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’ Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-Winner for physics in 1973, declared his dissent on man-made global warming claims at a Nobel forum on July 1, 2015.,,, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Dr. Giaever announced during his speech titled “Global Warming Revisited.”,,, Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.” “That is what he said. That is a ridiculous statement,” Giaever explained.,,, “How can he say that? I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” he added.,,, “When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory,” Giaever explained. Giaever said his climate research was eye opening. “I was horrified by what I found” after researching the issue in 2012, he noted. “Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”,,, “Then comes the clincher. If climate change does not scare people we can scare people talking about the extreme weather,” Giaever said.,,, “If anything we have entered period of low hurricanes. These are the facts,” he continued. “You don’t’ have to even be a scientist to look at these figures and you understand what it says,” he added. “Same thing is for tornadoes. We are in a low period on in U.S.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/07/deniers-in-their-midst-all-is-not-well-in-nobel-prize-land/
Also of related interest: The reason I am very skeptical of the AGW data coming from atheists is twofold. One was the 'hide the decline' fiasco from a few years back:
Climategate 'hide the decline' explained by Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk Climate Alarmism Has Undermined Science Itself - June 20, 2015 Excerpt: There was the southern hemisphere hockey-stick that had been created by the omission of inconvenient data series. There was the infamous “hide the decline” incident when a tree-ring-derived graph had been truncated to disguise the fact that it seemed to show recent cooling. And of course there was the mother of all scandals, the “hockey stick” itself: a graph that purported to show the warming of the last three decades of the twentieth century as unprecedented in a millennium, a graph that the IPCC was so thrilled with that it published it six times in its third assessment report and displayed it behind the IPCC chairman at his press conference. It was a graph that persuaded me to abandon my scepticism (until I found out about its flaws), because I thought Nature magazine would never have published it without checking. And it is a graph that was systematically shown by Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to be wholly misleading, as McKitrick recounts in glorious detail in his chapter in The Facts. Its hockey-stick shape depended heavily on one set of data from bristlecone pine trees in the American south-west, enhanced by a statistical approach to over-emphasise some 200 times any hockey-stick shaped graph. Yet bristlecone tree-rings do not, according to those who collected the data, reflect temperature at all. What is more, the scientist behind the original paper, Michael Mann, had known all along that his data depended heavily on these inappropriate trees and a few other series, because when finally prevailed upon to release his data he accidentally included a file called “censored” that proved as much: he had tested the effect of removing the bristlecone pine series and one other, and found that the hockey-stick shape disappeared. In March this year Dr Mann published a paper claiming the Gulf Stream was slowing down. This garnered headlines all across the world. Astonishingly, his evidence that the Gulf Stream is slowing down came not from the Gulf Stream, but from “proxies” which included—yes—bristlecone pine trees in Arizona, upside-down lake sediments in Scandinavia and larch trees in Siberia. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/climate-alarmism-has-undermined-science-itself/ US physics professor: 'Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life' - 2010 Excerpt: It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058265/us-physics-professor-global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-i-have-seen-in-my-long-life/
and the other is this very informative talk where the temperature data was found to be 'massaged' by an expert in the field who had first hand access to the raw data:
Dr Don Easterbrook Exposes Climate Change Hoax - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LkMweOVOOI In no ordinary presentation, Dr. Easterbrook (Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University) bombards the committee with an overwhelming arsenal of data and observations contrary to the theory of anthropogenic global warming. As the Internet jargon goes, this is a "must listen."
bornagain77_{July 12, 2015
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here is the article Excerpt: Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede. The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent. Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. (Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.) A 10-percent decline in polar sea ice is not very remarkable, especially considering the 1979 baseline was abnormally high anyway. Regardless, global warming activists and a compliant news media frequently and vociferously claimed the modest polar ice cap retreat was a sign of impending catastrophe. Al Gore even predicted the Arctic ice cap could completely disappear by 2014. In late 2012, however, polar ice dramatically rebounded and quickly surpassed the post-1979 average. Ever since, the polar ice caps have been at a greater average extent than the post-1979 mean. Now, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/ Here is the referenced graph of the updated data: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg Of personal note ringo, I don't follow the Global warming debate that deeply, I focus mainly on the ID-EVO debate, and thus I do not know the best sites for getting the straight dope instead of the usual propaganda, but what I find interesting is that the Darwinists whom I've debated on UD, and who are the most dogmatic in their atheistic bias (to the point of blinding them to the evidence for ID), are the ones who most vocally support Anthropic Global Warming. For me personally, no better evidence could exist that AGW is a hoax than having those particular atheists supporting it! :) They simply have lost all credibility with me!bornagain77_{July 12, 2015
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Born Again, where did you get the NASA data excerpt from on polar sea ice? I went here: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ and could not find it. The NASA data strongly suggest the opposite if I am reading it correctly. But, I am always open to correction. And what source would be the best source to find unbiased data on climate change? The key word is unbiased! Because I am not convinced that NASA is unbiased.ringo_{July 12, 2015
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mahuna @ 6
Sea levels are NOT rising, and in fact in a number of regions (the US East Coast, Scandinavia) the sea level is “falling” because the continents continue their rise since the great weight of the last Ice Age melted off 10,000 years ago.
If sea-level is stable to within a few millimeters and the continents are still undergoing post-glacial rebound then you would expect the tide-gauges to register a fall. If, as is the case, they show a steady rise then that would make the actual sea-level rise even worse than it appears. As for the polar ice caps
Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record. June snow cover for the Northern Hemisphere was the second lowest on record. In contrast, Antarctic sea ice extent remained higher than average. The pace of sea ice loss was near average for the month of June, but persistently warm conditions and increased melting late in the month may have set the stage for rapid ice loss in the coming weeks.

Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 averaged 11.0 million square kilometers (4.24 million square miles), the third lowest June extent in the satellite record. This is 920,000 square kilometers (355,200 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average of 11.89 million square kilometers (4.59 million square miles) and 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 square miles) above the record low for the month observed in 2010.
Seversky_{July 12, 2015
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Ignore AGW Scientists (& "Scientists") because they are annoying. But ignore Solar Scientists at your own risk. Not that it matters much. Increasing the burning of fossil fuels won't offset a mini ice age. Not by a long shot. The Sun is a big mother yikes.ppolish_{July 12, 2015
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Sea levels are NOT rising, and in fact in a number of regions (the US East Coast, Scandinavia) the sea level is "falling" because the continents continue their rise since the great weight of the last Ice Age melted off 10,000 years ago. NOAA has produced some VERY narrow, VERY questionable data showing sea level rises, but the general result of worldwide sea level measurements using satellites (only available since the 1970s) is that the height of our oceans is stable within a range of a couple millimeters. But there is a HUGE industry in World Disaster Prediction, and there's too much money and power at stake to let mere FACTS get in the way. Science be damned.mahuna_{July 12, 2015
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Seversky doesn't understand that one can accept GW while not accepting AGW. And in 15 years we are going to need much more than an additional 1 degree C increase to offset the cooling Sun that is coming.Virgil Cain_{July 12, 2015
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Seversky did you see the latest NASA satellite data on ice caps? Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat - May 2015 Excerpt: Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.,,, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/bornagain77_{July 12, 2015
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And while the denialists continue to deny, the seal level continues its inexorable rise
The Task Force looked to the best available science to estimate potential sea level rise. Not all regions of the marine coast will be affected in the same way, and this report focuses on estimates for two areas: the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island, including New York City, and the mid?Hudson Valley and Capital Region. Sea level rise affecting the Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island is projected to be 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s and 12 to 23 inches by the end of this century. However, rapid melt of land?based ice could double these projections in the next few decades, with a potential rise of up to 55 inches by the end of the century. Sea level rise in the mid?Hudson Valley and Capital Region will be somewhat less but will follow similar trends. The combination of rising sea level, continuing climate change, and more development in high?risk areas has raised the level of New York’s vulnerability to coastal storms. Without meaningful action on a number of key fronts, this vulnerability will increase in area and magnitude over time.
Seversky_{July 12, 2015
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Some scientists are predicting that an ice age will begin in 15 years- 'Mini ice age' coming in next fifteen years, new model of the Sun's cycle showsVirgil Cain_{July 12, 2015
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as to:
The great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses tested — or so I used to think.
I once naively believed that to, and still do believe that empirical science is great for deducing the structure of reality, and that many uncontroversial things are accepted quickly, but now, mainly because of how I've seen Darwinists relentlessly ignore the scientific method and impose their a-priori materialistic dogma, my belief about 'mainstream' science follows much more closely to Max Planck's view which he expressed towards the end of his life in his autobiography.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Max Planck, - Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag (Leipzig 1948), p. 22, as translated in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp. 33–34 (as cited in T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947)
Seeing as how resistant atheists are now, I can only imagine the resistance to 'a new scientific truth' Planck felt from atheists with his work in quantum mechanics:
"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Max Planck - Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)
bornagain77_{July 12, 2015
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