Gawker 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 4:00 AM
Mon Dec 21
13 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip Your Editors:
Tipline: 646-214-8138
Editor-in-Chief:
Gabriel Snyder |
West Coast Editor:
Richard Rushfield |
Contributing Editors:
Valleywag:
Ryan Tate |
Media:
Hamilton Nolan |
Politics:
Alex Pareene |
Investigations:
John Cook |
Entertainment:
Brian Moylan |
Nights:
Adrian Chen |
Azaria Jagger |
Ravi Somaiya |
Weekends:
Foster Kamer |
Video Editor:
Richard Blakeley |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/30/09
I believe that massive climate change may or may not be occurring. If it indeed is, man may or may not be making a big contribution to it. It may or may not be a normal cyclic change that occurs every so often in the planet's history. I don't take these beliefs for any religious reasons (I am an atheist). The fact is that I don't know these things because scientists themselves do not know them. Scientists in this area are often misquoted and their findings are too often pumped up to a massive degree. The fact of the matter is that the planet's climate is so complex and unpredictable, and the records until recently are so spotty, that it becomes impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen in the decades to come. With that being said, I am also all for "going green" and taking care of the environment (as well as dependency from oil), because there are many many reasons to do these things other than global warming. But the scare tactics and false urgency about a problem we yet know little about is not the way to do it.
11/30/09
*Full disclosure - I was this kid in 1996, after being scared to death by D.A.R.E. that my parents were going to kill me in a drunk driving crash if they had a single drink before driving me home. I once walked home three miles rather than get in the car with my parents. My parents thought this was hilarious.
12/02/09
11/30/09
Really? Where did you teach? I got tenure after 5 years, and resigned my professorship after nine, topping out at a whopping 45,600.00! yoohoo indeed (finger twirling very slowly).
But...I do teach in the Humanities, so I have the gift of grammar.
12/01/09
Seriously, I'm hoping you were working in some small community college in the midwest where the cost of living is really low. Otherwise, that just blows.
11/30/09
Looking for a longer rebuttal article link to send to some fam, if anyone has one.
11/30/09
I couldn't believe my family was pro-Palin, or any of the other crazy stuff I heard. I haven't bitten my tongue so hard in months.
11/30/09
As much as I hate those stupid Crossfire type shows, at least they let us all see what the other side had to say now and then (theoretically at least).
11/30/09
[www.realclimate.org]
and the comments starting at the top here:
[www.reddit.com]
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
[www.cbsnews.com]
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped - thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.
"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."
Seriously.
11/30/09
FYI: you got your little factoid wrong. The "cooling trend" has only been for 8 years, and only if you ignore the larger spike in temperatures over the last 50 years or so.
Meanwhile, the Rejkavik ice shelf has collapsed and ocean temperatures have risen during this supposed cooling trend.
11/30/09
11/30/09
My husband is a physical chemist and works for the military. He's gone to two seminars this year on how the military deals with it's nuclear waste. Bottom line: we bury it and pray someone in the future can find a solution. Oh, and they are also trying to figure out how to make symbol-based signs that will communicate "don't touch, radioactive!" to future generations. You know, in case society collapses. It keeps the cultural anthropologists employed, anyway.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
They should totally make this an open contest.
11/30/09
Rest assured, our best military minds are pondering this so that we don't have to.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
Or salt the earth for a few miles round, making it impossible to survive at all. Or they could ring the site with gym equipment from the mid-90s. Everyone who approached would think them instruments of torture, set out as a warning.
My last thought would be guarding the gates with the animatronic statues from the Hall of Presidents at Disney. Scare the crap out of everyone.
I want this government job, envisioning the mutant, teeny peoples of the future!
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
12/01/09
But this is HIDDEN nuclear waste, which we bury in deserts and secret caves and such. And everyone knows that if something is hidden, it is obviously treasure and should be kept close at all times and embraced during special ceremonies and possibly occasionally consumed. So now the problem is: for those teeny-tiny mutant humans who have somehow survived the epic meltdown event, how do we get inside their teeny-tiny mutant heads and figure out how to warn them?
What if we enclose a very lifelike mimic of a human corpse in each barrel? The cannibalism/burial/desecration taboo might have a chance of holding past armegeddon.
12/01/09
12/01/09
12/01/09
12/01/09
(Take a look sometime at the flow of tax dollars from those hated blue states to the hard-workin', freedom-lovin' red states. Vermont's in the clear.)
12/01/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
My father tended toward the conservative end of the spectrum (less a Teabagger than an Eisenhower man), yet he embraced such practices more than anyone I ever knew. His general disdain for wastefulness stemmed from being born and growing up in the midst of the depression. That informed his early adoption of recycling. He installed CFL's looooooooooooooooooong before they were fashionable, in order to save on our electric bills. He appreciated the taste/nutrition/low price of local produce, and always bought from farmers because, well, that's what he always did. He lamented our methods of disposing of industrial and personal waste because, as an avid hiker and canoer, there was no greater insult than watching some suspicious vapor rising off a river....or having to explain to your seven-year-old what that floating rubber thing floating by is NOT a balloon.
There are plenty of other ways to spin this. Personal responsibility! Patriotism! Help save money for the war on turr by using more energy efficient appliances! A polar bear floating away on an iceberg cannot be the only symbol of conservation. There are a slew of other benefits that need not be tied to a theory that, let's face it, is just not being accepted by a large segment of the population. Who cares wether they believe it or not, why not just explain to them some other relevant reason to get behind various reforms?
PS. My third grade class did a musical about recycling, and I had a huuuuge solo in this bluesy number about styrofoam. My deprogamming continues to this day.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
The crazy anti-intellectual/anti-science bent to much of the conservative movement makes me sad. I never thought I'd say this, but where have all the William F. Buckleys gone?
11/30/09
And as for your "people refuse to believe anything that comes from people they've decided are...," that swings both ways.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Where's the independence of thought, and where's the independence of acceptance? So much talk around here of the intolerance of loud-mouthed conservatives (most loud-mouths of any ilk tend to share intolerance in spades...), but when it's convenient to characterize in another direction, it's agreed upon by most. Just because everyone around you (the general you) agrees doesn't make it any more correct.
In my lame-o anecdotal observations, the people I've seen least likely to care about conservation are those who have little to no political opinion.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Yes, there are knee-jerk proponents of just about any political persuasion you can name. I don't think I said anything that would contradict that idea. We were talking about a particular sort of knee-jerker. And I have to say that responding to any discussion with "Well, there are members of X group who do that too!" instead of dealing with the issue at hand is pretty classic knee-jerk behavior. Two wrongs don't make a right.
[Edited to add] I don't believe in the validity of the theory of global warming because it's the in thing to do in my group, I believe in it because the vast majority of people who've made it their career to understand these issues have repeatedly stated that it's the case. Where anyone can show me reasonable evidence for their opinions, I'm happy to entertain their ideas.
11/30/09
There is no "Conservative Party" in this country. There are, however, crunchy cons.
I expect that if both the evidence were more solid, and the spokepersons for the whole global warming trend, not to mention all the profiteering from it, weren't so odious, there would be a lot of room for a bigger tent of conservationism. I mean, really, those damned ugly lightbulbs (I mean the light itself, not the shape) that we're being "encouraged" (-- mandated, thank you, Government) toward are reportedly full of mercury. Yet we'll ignore that in the name of "Global Warming." Stupid.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Negatron, friend. That's exactly the [theamericanconservatives.org] Hoffman ran under in New York state, with Palin, Limbaugh, etc.'s support, thereby derailing the moderate GOP candidate. Coincidentally, also what Rubio is expected to run under in Florida.
11/30/09
12/01/09
11/30/09
Not exactly - you know how people say this is the warmest the planet has been in 1,000 years, or 2,000 years? That's based on tree-ring temperature reconstructions. If tree-rings don't in fact reflect temperature, as more recent data seems to show, then they provide exactly zero evidence that this is a particularly warm period over the last 1,000 years.
And the small group of people related to these emails has been virtually the only source of tree-ring data used by the IPCC in their reports. So they are highly incented to "hide the decline" as it puts a key meme at risk.
Certainly global warming, climate change, etc is a much larger issue, but this particular group of scientists sure look like some bad apples.
11/30/09
Believe it or not, scientists like to address issues like this since it often leads to interesting new questions. No one gets grants for asking questions that have already been answered.
11/30/09
Fact is, if you look at that group's output, their choices as to sample size and statistical methods, and some of the responses in peer-reviewed literature (see D'Arrigo 2008) they just look dodgy. Biffra's walking back the robustness of his findings in "papers" he's just posting to the website...
11/30/09
What grates me the most about these guys is their utter, conscious, willful lack of understanding of the Scientific Method, and how peer review (and careers in academia/science) function.
I can understand them not knowing more than experts in a specialized, dynamic field. What I can't is their willful ignorance of the most basic aspects of how thinking people approach problems.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
'During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated. Moreover, the recent reduction in the response of trees to air-temperature changes would mean that estimates of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, based on carbon-cycle models that are uniformly sensitive to high-latitude warming, could be too low.'
11/30/09
That's where the "hide the decline" comes in: "look at the data for the last 1,500 years, it's hotter now than it's ever been" - using tree-ring reconstructions. Without hiding the decline, the tree-ring reconstructions look much less compelling, wouldn't you agree?
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
[www.wmo.ch]
Take a look at the graph on the first page, purporting to show that recent temperatures are higher than they've been in 2k years. These are solid, single lines running back hundreds of years. This is where they "hid the decline". Where in this report does it explain that this graph is really a mix of sources?
Look at the very last graph on this page to see what it looks like when you don't "hide the decline":
[www.uea.ac.uk]
I just find this behavior by scientists profoundly offensive - it's purposefully misleading.
11/30/09
I've never had reviewer comments make me cry, but that's because my hide is as tough as a rhino's and because I've only been a co-author (M.S., not PhD).
Now I'm not saying that peer-review is infallible, but it certainly isn't a cakewalk. And when crappy papers get through, other scientists aren't exactly reticent about ripping them apart.
11/30/09
You seem to be going all over the place in search of something that will validate whatever your viewpoint is, but I'm having a hard time following your logic.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
You originally (and incorrectly) asserted that no one knew about the divergence problem in 1999. If that was true, I could see your point. It isn't true, however, so I'm unsure why you would cling to that argument.
Gah, it feels like you just really want a reason to write off this research, regardless of the facts.
11/30/09
Re the validity of tree-ring data as temperature proxies - they adjusted tree-ring data to match the amplitude and std dev of the temperature records for 1900-1960 or something similar, which is a valid technique. Then, all of a sudden, the data stopped matching after 1960. One explanation is that for 1,000s of years, the width and density of tree-rings reflected the local temperature, and all of a sudden in the last 40 years they "diverged".
Another explanation is that tree-rings are an entirely unreliable temperature proxy.
There is no definitive evidence either way - other proxies are not detailed enough in this time scale, or have their own confounding issues, and obviously we don't have temperature records back that far.
Given all that, yes, I think any thinking person might wonder about the use of tree-ring width to show the temperature 1,200 years ago, when they can't even show the temperature today.
11/30/09
Not sure what you mean by "there isn't a problem with tree-ring data generally". That's just not true. There's significant literature on this. There's multiple decades of divergence. The hypothesis that tree-ring widths and density reflect ambient temperature is in no way supported by recent data. Just proclaiming tree-rings good temperature proxies, then saying that "wow, we really need to figure out why they're diverging" doesn't actually provide evidence or support for them being good proxies.
11/30/09
Again, it isn't unethical or wrong to not include data that you know is incorrect. It also doesn't make sense to throw out data because of a recent outlier that may have many causes.
11/30/09
As far as sea sediment, that's really tracking ocean temperatures, and here's an interesting graph showing that the ocean was almost a degree warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today (see page 4):
[home.badc.rl.ac.uk]
That sea sediment data looks entirely unrelated to surface temperature reconstructions from tree rings.
Re tree rings - they were able to match a portion of the curve from tree-ring data to a portion of the curve from temperature data. But nothing before or after matches. It's not "throwing out the entire dataset", it's suggesting that there is no reliable association between the tree-ring dataset and the temperature dataset. There is just no statistically significant association betweet tree-rings and temperature that supports using tree-rings to report on temperatures going back 1,500 years. Have you seen a peer-reviewed paper that suggests otherwise?
There's a lot of hand-waving, sure - but we're looking for robust, statistically supportable associations.
D'Arrigo 2008 in Nature I think has a good survey of the current state of the issue.
11/30/09
Here's the thing: we have fairly decent non-tree ring temperature records dating back to around 1900. The DP crops up around 1960. Prior to that, there is evidence that the tree-ring data correlates well with known climate events like droughts/floods/heat waves, etc. Because we've known about the DP since the mid-nineties, people have been looking at ways to evaluate tree-ring data. Lake sediments, wood isotope ratios, lots of other stuff way outside of my experience (I'm a lowly entomologist). So yes, scientists are actively working on these questions. And yes, there are other lines of evidence for climate change.
Do I think there's something wrong with asking questions about tree-ring data? Absolutely not! Do I assume that the scientists who support the DP hypothesis are duplicitous scam artists intent on deceiving the public? Absolutely not! And that's where I seem to diverge (har har) from you. This sort of disagreement/kerfuffle/ what have you happens all the time in science. There is the DP = all tree-ring data is questionable camp and the DP = a recent phenomenon that doesn't affect older records camp. My belief is that the truth will out, but I'm not in favor of discounting all of the tree-ring data yet.
11/30/09
11/30/09
12/01/09
I was trying to keep the discussion focussed on the "decline" in question, the hiding of which has been publicly discussed for over a decade.
11/30/09
....I really wish I lived in whatever alternate universe it is that these people occupy. It seems like it would be very 1984-like only less coherent or fun.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
I still think we should stop polluting the earth; clean up our water; become more fuel efficient; be smarter about pesticides and petrochemical-based fertilizers in our food supply; look at biofuels and renewable sources of energy.
However, to say that climate change is man-made without acknowledging other factors is foolish.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
Naturally occurring changes in temp and climate happen extremely gradually, whereas, in the past 30 years, alone, it has changed drastically. This isn't because nature decided to increase its rate of production, but rather due to the laissez-faire attitudes of modern industry and the indifference emoted by large-scale populations like ours.
Naturally occurring changes aren't insignificant, but in comparison, they sure do seem that way.
11/30/09
I don't remember ANY scientist in favor of global warming / climate change saying it's exclusively man made.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
Momof3wildkids is a green mom. We are installing solar panels on the roof this spring; when I am not carpooling w/the 3 kids, I toodle around in a Prius; I removed nasty oil-based heating system and put in a very high efficiency natural gas one; we put in a well for all of our outdoor water needs; I practice integrated pest management in my organic garden; I buy local food; I hang my laundry out to dry in the summer, etc... I do all those things because they are smart to do for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with global warming, per se. I want a clean food and water supply and I want to be less dependent on fossil fuels that are in short supply.
Am I helping stem global warming? I haven't the foggiest since I am not sure what the true impact of my carbon footprint is on global warming... not sure anyone really does.
@m4ximusprim3: Spot on.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
The analysis in the post content seems to support the statement that these communications did not "sweep" any unethical behavior "under the rug." It actually looks like an ethical discussion resulted in the revocation of bad science - justifiably - from reporting.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
Also... the point of this post: I believe you are missing it.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Lack of sentence structure/capitalization is actually a really good indicator that the individual is, in fact, a PhD student in a science discipline.
11/30/09
11/30/09
@shwahaha: I apologize for not using proper grammar and sentence structure in my comment. I didn't think it would detract from its meaning, but considering that you completely missed my point, that must have been the case.
11/30/09
I didn't think you were arguing in favor of a global warming conspiracy. I was just making the connection (poorly, obviously) that the folks who have been so willing to latch onto these emails do make arguments like that.
It doesn't look like these scientists were involved in sneaky data manipulation. They were pretty clear about what data they excluded, and why. Specifically, they excluded the post 1960 tree-ring data because it had been found to diverge significantly from the thermometer-recorded data from the same time period. I'm sure there are people who will argue that they shouldn't have excluded that data, or that the divergence problem brings into question the validity of using tree-ring data at all, but those are separate arguments from whether these scientists were being unethical.
This is one of the things that irks me about the politicization of global warming science. It makes every debate fodder for the politicians. Scientists should be able to argue about findings without worrying that the argument will be used to discredit an entire field.
Shoot, in my own area of research there are competing camps who publish papers where they subtly trash the details of eachother's theories. It doesn't mean that all of the science, or even most of it, is worthless. Thank goodness nobody outside of a few academics gives a crap.
11/30/09
And these are the same folks who have created journals for the sole purpose of bypassing the peer-review process and then they get upset when someone calls them on it? What a bunch of crybabies.
This stuff wouldn't piss me off so much if these science-illiterate schmendricks had no influence on policy. But they do, and it really is sad.