Quotulatiousness

December 16, 2009

Hiding . . . everything

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

David Harsanyi explains why federally funded researchers don’t have the same expectation of privacy that privately funded workers do:

In this country, even a global warming denialist with a carbon fetish and bad intentions has the right to see the inner workings of government.

Or at least he should.

When leaked e-mails recently exposed talk of manipulating scientific evidence on global warming, Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, argued that skeptics, and other evil-doers, had cherry-picked and presented his comments out of context.

To rectify this injustice, I sent Trenberth (and NCAR) a Freedom of Information request asking for his e-mail correspondences with other renowned climate scientists in an effort to help contextualize what they’ve been talking about.

Surely the tragically uninformed among us could use some perspective on innocuous Trenberth comments like “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t” or “we are [nowhere] close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter.”

So, of course, the federally funded organization snapped right to getting the information they were legally required to provide, right? Perhaps in some other parallel universe, but not in this one:

Well, soon after the request was fired off, I was informed by NCAR’s counsel that the organization was, in fact, not a federal agency — since its budget is laundered through the National Science Foundation — thus it is under no obligation to provide information to the public.

“Why don’t you put all your emails online for everyone to see,” Trenberth helpfully suggested to me. “My email is none of your business.”

December 10, 2009

It’s a Climategate Christmas

Filed under: Environment, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

At this rate, we’ll all think of a place when we hear the name “Darwin”

Filed under: Australia, Environment — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

It’s a long article, but well worth reading in full:

People keep saying “Yes, the Climategate scientists behaved badly. But that doesn’t mean the data is bad. That doesn’t mean the earth is not warming.”

Let me start with the second objection first. The earth has generally been warming since the Little Ice Age, around 1650. There is general agreement that the earth has warmed since then. See e.g. Akasofu. Climategate doesn’t affect that.

The second question, the integrity of the data, is different. People say “Yes, they destroyed emails, and hid from Freedom of information Acts, and messed with proxies, and fought to keep other scientists’ papers out of the journals . . . but that doesn’t affect the data, the data is still good.” Which sounds reasonable.

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.

[. . .]

DarwinZeroWithAdjustments

Yikes again, double yikes! 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.

One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero.

I’m in no way qualified to pass judgement on any of this. My bias is usually to trust that the scientist has no pre-decided outcome in mind . . . and that they verify their data supports the conclusions before publishing. Climategate/Climaquiddick shows that, at least in one field, this is not true.

Normally, this sort of science-by-press-release is quickly exposed (think of the cold fusion and the Korean human cloning announcements, for example), which works to quickly stamp out the inclination among others who might try to game the system. In the case of AGW, they did more groundwork before going to the press . . . but if Darwin Zero is an example of the kind of work they did everywhere, then it’s just a better-hidden case of science-by-press-release.

Except — and this is huge — the implications of the deception were not limited to a few undeserving white-coated “scientists” getting press coverage and grant money. The AGW movement aimed at nothing less than a take-over of the entire economy, putting carbon commissars in charge of everything. Their work would lead to pseudo-scientific based controls over all human activities (because, as the EPA recently decided, all greenhouse gases must be regulated . . . and there’s carbon dioxide produced every time you exhale).

December 9, 2009

The EPA wants to regulate, well, everything

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Environment — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

The EPA’s decision that greenhouse gases fall under their regulatory control, while not surprising, should be overturned:

What Jackson has done, though, is inadvertently offer the strongest case against the EPA’s dubious decision on carbon dioxide. If the EPA’s actions really converge on as many spheres of public life as Jackson asserts, then a single crusading regulatory agency is in no position — and should have no authority — to regulate all of them.

No worries, we’re told. The EPA wouldn’t do it. It’s a bluff. It has other things in mind. In this case, it is all about hastening much-needed “action” on climate change by employing a technique universally known as blackmail.

The timing of the EPA announcement gives President Barack Obama the ammunition he needs to make a climate deal in Copenhagen, where leaders from around the world have gathered for one last chance to save mankind — until they all fly to by-then temperate Mexico next year for the last last chance to save mankind.

Obama, as we know, has no authority to enter into a binding international treaty (isn’t the Constitution irritating?), as any treaty must be ratified by the Senate — a Senate that won’t pass a cap-and-trade scheme any time soon if we’re lucky.

Now that the EPA can duplicate any suicidal emissions pact world leaders can cook up (exempt: emerging nations, poor nations, and nations that value prosperity), the president would not need to ratify a thing. And who needs treaties when the Obama administration has already threatened the Senate with unilateral regulations on greenhouse gases unless a cap-and-trade bill is passed? The administration need only mirror the agreement it can’t make.

December 7, 2009

A Devil’s Dictionary for Copenhagen

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

Tunku Varadarajan updates Ambrose Bierce for the Copenhagen conference:

A is for anthropogenic: (as in anthropogenic global warming, or “AGW”), a $10 word for “man-made” which global-warmists wield as proof of expertise — no one more so than Al Gore, who, after having invented the Internet, turned his prodigious mind to the conundrum of AGW.

[. . .]

C is for the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the now-discredited source of much of the data used to fuel climate hysteria. In November, in an episode that was oh-so-predictably dubbed Climategate, a cache of leaked emails showed that researchers systematically hid or manipulated data that was inconsistent with the accepted narrative of man-made climate change. (Read John Tierney’s clear-headed critique here.) Don’t forget carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas once considered essential to life on earth, not to mention bubbles in Champagne. (Although it’s now regarded as a poisonous pollutant, you can, however, trade it.) Think also of consensus — the idea that science is settled by an asserted poll of experts after all objections from dissenting scientists have been suppressed.

Do as we say, not as we do

Filed under: Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:04

It will come as no real surprise to anyone that the Copenhagen gab-and-grabfest will “produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough”:

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports — or to Sweden — to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

I’d point out the irony, but the earnest types in the AGW movements don’t do irony.

December 5, 2009

Met Office reacts to Climategate

Filed under: Britain, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

Britain’s Met Office is taking strong measures in light of the Climategate revelations:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

December 4, 2009

Rex Murphy unleashed

Filed under: Environment, Media, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:28

Don’t bother your pretty little heads about all this “science” stuff

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:20

The non-scientists among us (that’s you and you and you and . . .) should just take a pill, sit back, and stop trying to understand the science:

And history repeats itself with climate change. We tell you people of the imminent dangers from the earth warming, and what do you do? You mock us. You question our motives. People who can’t even convert Fahrenheit to Celsius try and tell us we did the science wrong. Now emails have leaked from the Climate Research Unit that apparently show that scientists were fixing the data and trying to suppress the scientific research of dissenters, and you people demand answers from us. I have one thing to say to that. How dare you!

You do not understand the first thing about climate research. Man-made global warming is settled science. Disaster is imminent. We know this. It is a fact. We don’t waste time on studies that say otherwise, the same way we don’t waste time on studies that assert that the earth is flat. We are very smart people, and when we say something is so, you should just accept it.

So you think what is in those emails is important? Well, what exactly do you know? Do you see the white lab coats we wear? That color symbolizes pure science. Were someone like you to wear one, within five minutes it would be stained with neon orange powdered cheese and wet with drool from you trying to comprehend the data sets people like me look at every day.

December 3, 2009

The hidden damage from Climategate

Filed under: Environment, Media, Politics, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Daniel Henninger correctly identifies the worst result of Climategate . . . not the still-ongoing debate about AGW, but the damage to science as a whole due to the unethical, unscientific, and (in some cases) illegal activities of the CRU:

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don’t think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn’t only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called “the scientific community” had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).

Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because “science” said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

The would-be green tyrants will recover from Climategate, but the rest of the scientific community will suffer for their sins. Malpractice and deliberate deceit in one area will continue to taint genuine scientists for years to come.

December 2, 2009

Why fearing global cooling makes more sense

Filed under: Environment — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:28

With all the recent worries about the Earth warming up, it needs to be pointed out that rising temperatures may be bad but falling temperatures would undoubtedly be much worse:

When the environment is an evolutionary system that is based on adaption and survival of the fittest them how do you define damage? In terms of toxins/poisons its easy to do but in terms of temperature change then life has always adapted to it and either survived or perished depending depending on the ability to relocate. There is also the argument that if you help a species, make it easier then, like man you make them weaker. We are much less physiologically able to adapt than we have ever been because the comforts of our technologies have meant many of our evolutionary traits for survival are not being used. A variation in temperature could cause a change in habitats for many species. For some it will be a reduction of habitat and others an increase in habitat. Historically speaking there is no evidence that any warm period wiped out the earth or life on it. Rather the warm periods of the earth are when life has flourished on earth, vegetation has proliferated and habitats have increased. Whilst much has been made in global warming alarmism about cuddly polar bears becoming extinct (in fact polar bear numbers have increased fivefold), there has been little mention of all the species that would extend and increase their habits further poleward as the earth warmed and thus proliferate. Man likewise has been called a child of the tropics, look at how all our houses are heated to tropical temperatures and again history shows us during the warm periods civilizations flourish as does food supply.

However when we look at the cold this is quite a different story. The cold decimates nearly all life on earth as habitats are restricted, growing seasons reduce, vegetation is covered in snow and civilisations perish — history has given us ample examples of this. If we simply look at a microcosm of nature we see that animals living in cold areas often have to hibernate, their bodies adapted to the lack of food for a large part of the year. This is what the cold is all about.

December 1, 2009

Most ringing endorsement Stephen Harper has ever received

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:33

I never knew Harper had it in him:

This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I’ve broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

That’s George Monbiot, known to his enemies as “The Great Moonbat”, stumping for wavering Tory voters to rally to Harper’s side. I realize he doesn’t intend it to be read that way, but for Alberta, the tar sand project is their biggest economic project for this century, and any criticism is taken as an attack on their economic future.

“Global warming is like pornography for Big Government addicts”

Filed under: Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

The mainstream media is still doing a great job of ignoring or minimizing the potential impact of the CRU data leak. Doctor Zero contrasts the gullibility (or worse) of the political classes with the wariness of business people:

Few recent events have illustrated the ineptitude, and political agenda, of the mainstream media more dramatically than “Climagate.” The revelation of email correspondence from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, documenting various attempts to suppress data and manipulate scientific “consensus” with thuggish tactics, confirms what critics of the global-warming movement have always maintained: it has a lot more to do with money and politics than science. In fact, the global-warming movement is essentially the opposite of science — the manipulation and destruction of empirical data to support a theory whose accuracy was decided in advance.

[. . .]

An objective media would respond to this blockbuster news story with front-page headlines and “special report” television treatment. By now, the authors of the incriminating Climate Research Unit emails would be infamous around the world. Top operators of the global warming racket, such as Al Gore, would be hiding in their mansions, afraid to face the mob of angry reporters gathered outside. Liberals love to accuse big corporations of manufacturing crises and taking advantage of consumers with false product information and deceptive advertising. Here is the paramount example of those offenses, on a scale that would widen the eyes of the greatest titans of industry. If a private corporation had conducted a scam as vast, and as destructive to the prosperity of nations — and the aspirations of the working poor…

… but no private corporation could do anything like this, could they? The global warming scam is the kind of crime that only Big Government can mastermind.

Private industry makes plenty of mistakes, but the global warming scam is defined by its utter contempt for costs and benefits — the laws of gravity that hold businesses in orbit around the free market. The global warming cult maintains that no chances can be taken — we must ignore all reservations and contrary evidence, and proceed as if the worst possible outcomes are inevitable, unless we take drastic action. We have to take this action immediately — not even the slightest delay is acceptable. Members of the global warming cult provide constantly shifting dates for environmental doomsday, painting dire pictures of coastal cities becoming aquariums after the polar ice caps melt.

Australia’s Liberal Party dumps leader

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:16

After losing a number of shadow ministers over a proposed carbon tax, Australia’s Liberals have replaced Malcolm Turnbull with AGW skeptic Tony Abbott.

Australian conservatives have shown the way by dumping the party leader who was in favour of massive carbon taxes and replacing him with one who stated last month that AGW is “crap.”

This makes Malcolm Turnbull, the suddenly-ex-leader of Australia’s Liberal party, the first major political victim of the Climategate furore. And his replacement Tony Abbott, the first politician to reap the benefits of the world’s growing scepticism towards ManBearPig. Of the three candidates, he was the only one committed to delaying the Australian government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

The trouble began last week when Australia’s opposition Liberal party began haemorrhaging frontbenchers, all of them preferring to lose their jobs than be railroaded by their leader into voting with the Government on Kevin Rudd’s new carbon tax.

November 30, 2009

CRU’s fall from Mount Olympus

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Andrew Orlowski finds the “shocked, shocked!” reactions to the Climate Research Unit’s systematic perversion of the scientific process to be a bit overdone:

Reading the Climategate archive is a bit like discovering that Professional Wrestling is rigged. You mean, it is? Really?

The archive — a carefully curated 160MB collection of source code, emails and other documents from the internal network of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — provides grim confirmation for critics of climate science. But it also raises far more troubling questions.

Perhaps the real scandal is the dependence of media and politicians on their academics’ work — an ask-no-questions approach that saw them surrender much of their power, and ultimately authority. This doesn’t absolve the CRU crew of the charges, but might put it into a better context.

[. . .]

The allegations over the past week are fourfold: that climate scientists controlled the publishing process to discredit opposing views and further their own theory; they manipulated data to make recent temperature trends look anomalous; they withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice, and they were generally beastly about people who criticised their work. (You’ll note that one of these is far less serious than the others.)

But why should this be a surprise?

Well, it’s quite understandable that the folks who’ve been pointing out the Emperor’s lack of clothing for the last few years are indulging in a fair bit of Schadenfreude . . . but it’s disturbing that the mainstream media are still trying to avoid discussing the issue as much as possible. This is close to a junk-science-based coup d’etat which would have had vast impact on the lives of most of the western world, and the media are still wandering away from the scene of the crime, saying, essentially “there’s nothing to see here, move along”.

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