In honor of the amazingly stupid (politically, economically, and environmentally) EPA decision, here’s some interesting comments about AGW.
At the ‘climate denialist’ blog WattsUpWithThat, blogger Willis Eschenbach just posted an interesting analysis of some Australian raw climate data.
I’ll comment on that in a sec, but wanted to highlight this:
There are three main global temperature datasets. One is at the CRU, Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, where we’ve been trying to get access to the raw numbers. One is at NOAA/GHCN, the Global Historical Climate Network. The final one is at NASA/GISS, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The three groups take raw data, and they “homogenize” it to remove things like when a station was moved to a warmer location and there’s a 2C jump in the temperature. The three global temperature records are usually called CRU, GISS, and GHCN. Both GISS and CRU, however, get almost all of their raw data from GHCN. All three produce very similar global historical temperature records from the raw data.
OK, this is – if true – the answer to one of the questions I hoped to get to in my ‘pet project.’ Without making any judgment on the quality of the datasets, the interesting issue is that if AGW scientists rely on one sole ‘master dataset’ rather than heterogeneous sets of data – and if the social pressure is to conform to that one master dataset – the risk of social drift and groupthink get raised substantially.
Now I’m not convinced that’s true – one reason I want to do my project is so that I can rule it in or out. But it is to me a vastly important issue, and one that needs to be exposed to the light of common understanding as quickly as possible.
I’ll make one more comment.
Critics like the bloggers at WattsUpWithThat and Climate Audit tend to do posts like this that tear into some ‘nugget’ of information. When I go read Climate Progress or Real Climate, what I’d love to see more of (and I’ve seen some) is someone taking on the claims made in this post and making an explanation of why it is that the argument there doesn’t hold water.
Here’s the core of Eschenbach’s claim:
What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right – but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?
Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style – they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.
Take a look at his (detailed, thorough) post and post your own comment on what you think it means.
–
Here is a really good explanation of homogenization and its pluses and pitfalls from a statistician (its looking to be a multi-part post).
“Link”:http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1459
While I realize the importance of getting the science right here, I still don’t understand something. It seems to me that all the things we would do to deal with climate change are things we should be doing anyway for a multitude of reasons. This just doesn’t seem like an either or situation. Do we lower the ridiculous level of pollution we create and get a handle on some form of sustainable resource management because of Global Warming? Or do we do it as a logical alternative to eventual self destruction due to toxic air, water and food?
The arguments against creating new standard for emissions, etc seem to be connected to money, over life. There will always be a reason to put off taking care of our planet. It’s like quitting smoking, you know it will kill you, but you’ll quit after the holidays or after you make that deadline at work or when you aren’t so busy, or when you can afford a hypnotist and all the while the tumors in your lungs are trying to grow.
TJSmith: some of the things the policy weenies would do are “multi-purpose”, but many are not. What good is carbon trading if there’s no “A” in “AGW”? For instance, something that could be done right now is using natural gas instead of coal for large-scale power generation, but since natural gas isn’t completely perfect, AGW fighters would oppose it.
One other thing is money *is* life. When you redirect trillions from one effort to another, you are moving vast amounts of human effort and wealth away from the real world into an artificial world of bureaucrats and bureaucratically-directed policies. There will be millions of people who will die that wouldn’t otherwise, or who will live far more unpleasant lives due to a weaker world economy. In this case, money is just a proxy for human effort and energy.
_”Do we lower the ridiculous level of pollution we create and get a handle on some form of sustainable resource management because of Global Warming?”_
The problem is we need to establish whether CO2 is a pollutant. If there is no AGW (or not enough to be problematic), CO2 is certainly not a pollutant and is indeed far cleaner of a byproduct than, say, electric car batteries.
But turn the question around- if the powers that be were thinking along those lines, there is something damned close to a silver bullet in this discussion. A practically infinite power source we’ve been harnessing very safely for 60 years that creates zero CO2, has been proven to work efficiently and scaleably with current (hell, 60 year old) technology.
A lot of us are wondering if indeed AGW is coming to destroy humanity as we know it, why aren’t the greens and their political allies screaming bloody murder FOR nuclear power?
On the other hand, when the solutions, as you suggest, just seem like real swell ideas that just happen to line up exactly with the big government liberal play-book, you start to wonder which is the cart and which is the horse.
I don’t think it matters, in some ways, which way the argument goes. Whatever is decided, some will die and some will live more prosperous lives and there will still be pictures of starving children on late night television. I just think the view is skewed when it comes to long term sustainability. Short term profits at the expense of long term health and welfare are just false economy. The entire conversation, with regard to the environment, should be about what we can do to protect and extend the health of vital resources (including air) and how to accomplish these things rather than who is a “treehugger” or a “corporate villain.” Whose team is right and whose is wrong. I also think if someone is doctoring the data to spin the argument towards one team over another they are practicing the kind of disingenuous divisiveness that does a great deal more harm than good for everyone. I am a bright eyed dreamer who thinks there really is only one team when it comes to the rock where we all live. Naive, yes?
_”The entire conversation, with regard to the environment, should be about what we can do to protect and extend the health of vital resources (including air) and how to accomplish these things rather than who is a “treehugger” or a “corporate villain.”_
Absolutely true, but pretend as we might there _are_ vital interests at play here, and there is a hoard of money in the offing for either side.
How do you even begin to compromise when the two sides can’t decide what constitutes clean air?
We’re all for a cleaner earth (yes, even the Evil Energy Companies, which btw stand to make a fortune in alternative energy). The question is how do we get there and how much do we spend to do it.
But I think we should be asking some pretty basic ‘are you playing fair in the sandbox’ questions, such as, if you are arguing civilization is endangered by CO2, how can you oppose nuclear energy? Its revealing because it goes to the heart of motivation.
how can you oppose nuclear energy?
Because it’s dirty as hell. And we don’t have anywhere to put it.
Take France, for example. Which “loves”:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html nuclear energy, but hates the idea of storing it. And “reprocessing”:http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-wasteland/1 is becoming a major headache.
_”Because it’s dirty as hell. And we don’t have anywhere to put it._
_Take France, for example. Which loves nuclear energy, but hates the idea of storing it. And reprocessing is becoming a major headache._
Fine. Do any of these problems rise to the level of destruction of the human race?
From Alchemists’ link:
_France, in contrast, now reprocesses well over 1000 metric tons of spent fuel every year without incident at the La Hague chemical complex, at the head of Normandy’s wind-blasted Cotentin peninsula. La Hague receives all the spent fuel rods from France’s 59 reactors. The sprawling facility, operated by the state-controlled nuclear giant Areva, has racked up a good, if not unblemished, environmental record._
Sounds like a total nightmare. For the record the problems they talk about are economic, not technological or safety concerns. If its a question of the feds having to burn a few tens of billions to eat reprocessing losses, that doesn’t even _begin_ to compare to the trillions we are being told to suck up without a nuclear alternative.
That’s interesting, because I thought the CRU had unique sources of data. Including data cloaked in secrecy, covered over with confidentiality agreements, and stored on “Mission Impossible” tape recorders that tend to explode.
The heart of GHCN is the National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, NC. Here is their “death graph page”:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globtemp.html showing global warming, which comes from AR4 and the good old IPCC.
“Here is the NCDC mission statement, in re Global Warming.”:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/whatisncdc.html
Underwhelming. About 5000 degrees cooler than Al Gore’s hypothalamus. It must be the shade from all those lofty pines.
BTW, while I’m sure the NCDC is very conscientious about reading thermometers and stuff, from a moral point of view I do not trust any son of a bitch who uses the phrase “climate change” as a gloss for GW/AGW. It’s a squeaky little weasel-fart phrase, suitable for politicians, celebrities, and scumbags who sell phony stock in non-existent “green” companies.
_”That’s interesting, because I thought the CRU had unique sources of data.”_
They used to.
Does anyone have a theory about why this world wide conspiracy has seemingly fooled the whole of the world , aside from:
1. “Tree Huggers are trying to control the world.” or
2. “Liberal Scientists are trying to cement their Academic reputations?” or
3. “Al Gore wants to make a Billion.
With the reams that have been written about AWG over the past couple of weeks, I haven’t seen any other theories.
Please enlighten me if there are any others.
You haven’t been listening. Group think and confirmation bias negate the need for a conspiracy.
This debate has really boiled down to those who believe its possible that something this big has been oversold by a small number of scientists to a large number of scientists (and everyone else), and those who believe that is simply impossible and deserves no further investigation.
Because it’s dirty as hell. And we don’t have anywhere to put it.
I thought the Nevada site looked pretty good. I know someone who knew someone involved in evaluating that site, and the story he tells is of continuously moving goalposts. Is it safe for 100 years? Yes. Is it safe for 1000 years? Yes. Is it safe for 10000 years? Who the hell knows, maybe mutant rabbits will dig it up…
The problem isn’t technical, it is political. Personally, I think we should fence off the environmentalists in flyover country where they can run with the free range buffalo and evolve to eat grass. The rest of us can move to the coasts and continue to enjoy the luxuries provided by engineering and science.
So now your question is:
_Does anyone have a theory about why this world wide conspiracy has seemingly fooled the whole of the world , aside from:_
_4. Group think and confirmation bias negate the need for a conspiracy_
Not so much an answer as a negation of the entire premise, no? Would this be the first time in recorded history that the conventional wisdom was wrong then?