It is the fourth quarter, the team you hate (perhaps the Green Bay Packers) have been winning the whole time, but over the last few minutes your team has scored enough points to be just barely ahead. And, you have the momentum. The other team has many key players out with injuries, your players are really clicking, and all the stats have turned your way. Nothing is assured, but you are likely to win this game (may be you are the Vikings, so this is an extreme event).
But the other team (hey, let’s change them from the Green Bay Packers to the New Orleans Saints) is starting to play dirty. The referees are blind (maybe they’ve been paid off?) and are not seeing many of the obvious penalties, and their defense is trying really hard to injure your quarterback.
That was a metaphor. The following is an important press release from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
Yesterday, CSLDF filed a brief as amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” urging the Arizona Court of Appeals to protect climate scientists’ files from invasive open records requests. CSLDF filed its brief in support of the Arizona Board of Regents, which has defended the records of two University of Arizona climate scientists from massive and harassing open records requests by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal).
E&E Legal, as detailed further in our brief (available here), touts its mission as “free-market environmentalism through strategic litigation” and a key part of its strategy has been repeatedly misusing open records laws to go after huge swaths of climate scientists’ records. Its work has been described as “filing nuisance suits to disrupt important academic research”[1] as part of an aim to convince “the public to believe human-caused global warming is a scientific fraud.”[2]
In this case, E&E Legal claims that Arizona state open records laws entitle it to virtually unfettered access to two U of A professors’ files, and it has sought an astonishing 13 years of emails and other documents from both Dr. Malcolm Hughes and Dr. Jonathan Overpeck – 26 years of records in total. E&E Legal claims it needs these records because it is conducting a “transparency project,” and it has argued that these two researchers were somehow part of a “scientific-technological elite” that has “successfully corrupted public policy” with respect to “climate alarmism.”[3]
The University of Arizona turned over some records to E&E Legal, and litigated to withhold others. A March 2015 trial court decision validated the University’s decision to deny large portions of E&E Legal’s requests. (You can read more about the trial court decision here.)
CSLDF’s October 26th amicus brief asks the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division II, to uphold the trial court’s decision and protect climate scientists’ private correspondence and other records against E&E Legal’s intrusive requests. As described in our brief, E&E Legal’s requests are “part of a broader strategy of attacking individual scientists as a way to try to discredit theories or even entire fields of study.”[4] We agree with the Arizona Board of Regents, which argued before the trial court that these requests seek ultimately “to attack [researchers’] science, criticize their interactions with each other and publicly assault how they speak about or defend themselves against the increasingly small group of outliers who continue to deny man’s role in global climate change.”[5]
Unfortunately, abusive open records requests on publicly funded scientists have been an increasingly prominent method of using the legal system to attack climate scientists. Open records laws, namely the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or state equivalents, are intended to serve the public good and provide transparency on government decision-making by allowing citizens to request copies of administrative records – but open records laws can also be twisted into a tool for harassment of publicly funded scientists, such as those employed by the government or public universities.[6] Climate scientists in particular have been regularly subjected to attacks via abuse of open records laws, by E&E Legal and other ideologically motivated groups. In addition to the Arizona requests currently in litigation, E&E Legal has also filed similar open records requests in, at least, Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.[7]
In fact, CSLDF’s initial project was to generate funding and publicity for the defense of Dr. Michael Mann, who was on the receiving end of several invasive open records requests from E&E Legal. E&E Legal – then named the American Tradition Institute – sought massive numbers of emails and other documents that Dr. Mann had written or received over the course of six years of employment at the University of Virginia. After years of legal battling, the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately agreed in 2014 that the state’s open records protections included protecting research and academic “free thought and expression.”
But defeat in Virginia hardly slowed E&E Legal down, because “while they lose repeatedly, in one way they are successful: they confuse the public debate, and force universities and scientists to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves.”[8] There is also a substantial time element – in Arizona, Dr. Hughes and Dr. Overpeck spent ten weeks and six weeks, respectively, culling and reviewing emails potentially responsive to E&E Legal’s requests.
Consequently, CSLDF has asked the Arizona Court of Appeals not only to affirm the trial court’s ruling but also “to make clear that, in the absence of a showing of exceptional circumstances, certain documents related to research are exempt from disclosure under the Arizona Public Records Law.” In particular, we believe that, unless there are extreme circumstances or potential conflicts of interest at play, “prepublication drafts, editorial comments, peer reviews, email (between and among researchers, co-authors, reviewers and other collaborators), unfinished or inactive research, and unused data” should be presumptively protected. ”Confidentiality must of course be balanced against the societal goods that traditionally justify public-record laws; CSLDF does not believe the presumptive exemptions it asks the Court to adopt will impede any appropriate use of the Arizona Public Records Law.”[9]
CSLDF is committed to protecting the scientific endeavor, and it is fighting back against legal attacks on climate scientists. We hope the Arizona Court of Appeals upholds the trial court decision, and implements protections to help prevent future attacks on public researchers. The best climate science needs climate scientists who can do their work free of harassment.
Many thanks to our wonderful legal team at Mayer Brown and Osborn Maledon for all their help.
To here to see the version with the footnotes.
Go HERE to donate to the fund.
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It is interesting that legal process looks good sometimes (civil RICO against some climates scientists is good)(defamation legal action against opinion writer looks good).
But sometimes legal process looks bad sometimes (climate scientists having to respond to FOIA or answer congressional subpoenas).
Makes you want to go Hmmmmm.
Yeah, Hmm…
Why are those with a self-centered focus always so quick to distort logic and equate a concerted effort to harass with defending one’s self against defamation? An intelligent person would instead equate the harassers with the defamers and condemn them both…
Why are those with a self-centered focus always so quick to distort logic and equate a concerted effort to harass with defending one’s self, family, and future against the damaging effects of global overheating? An intelligent person would instead equate the harassers with those determined to destroy our future for personal gain and condemn them both…
What’s up with people who act like they can’t tell the difference?
Makes you want to go Hmmmmm.
yep.
It is another example of how people bring their own biases into play when they look at the data.
Two people (say you and me) look at exactly the same data and we each reach opposite conclusions – because of our own cognitive biases.
I listened to a very interesting podcast about a paper in either Nature or Science (cannot remember which journal) that a group of social scientists picked one hundred random papers and tried to replicate them.
If I recall correctly – only 44 could be replicated (which is higher than in other fields – so good for them). Of the ones which were replicated, the replicated study found the effect studied was 1/3 less than claimed in the original paper.
That is fascinating!
As scientists go through many trials or iterations, they just tend to select the ones (unconsciously) which are the “best” or show their hypothesis in the best light.
This is human nature.
So a prudent person discounts scientific claims by 1/3 and has to take bias into account.
I am biased.
But so are you and everybody else.
Makes you go hmmmmm.
RickA, I don’t look at the data and pass judgment.
You do.
I allow expert scientists to gather & look at the data, and make the judgment calls.
You don’t.
Your judgments are full of your cognitive biases.
My method allows for individual cognitive biases to be diluted and filtered both statistically and by peer review, resulting in evaluations that can be trusted over the ill-informed self-serving opinions of an individual.
You cannot be trusted.
Makes you go hmmmmm.
@~2
“What’s up with people who act like they can’t tell the difference?”
The question is rhetorical, but I’ll answer it anyway. They must compulsively express their ideological arrogance and complete, dismissive contempt for the viewpoint “other.”
In particular, RickA is a useless troll stooping to teach us dimwitted, colicky children about the ways of the world.
It’s not just dismissive contempt for the viewpoint “other.”
It’s much worse than that.
It’s dismissive contempt for rationality, wisdom, experience, observation, expertise, good judgment, and especially contempt for other human beings who would be negatively impacted by their childish insistence on being allowed to maintain a costly, unsustainable lifestyle — one that they do not merit.
Brainstorms – you should look at the data and pass judgment.
Use your brain – don’t rely on someone else.
Or at least get a second opinion (useful when the first opinion doesn’t pass the smell test).
It started getting warmer before CO2 levels started rising – don’t you wonder what caused that?
Don’t you wonder if that natural force is still warming?
Do you really find it plausible that there is no more natural variation – that humans have caused 110% of the warming since 1950?
OA – you do make me feel mature by comparison to yourself.
Brainstorms – do you ever wonder what will happen to the other human beings when you make everything more expensive for them?
If natural variations are supposed to cancel out over time – how do you two explain the difference between the peak of the MWP and the depth of the LIA?
Pretty big temperature swing over 500 years – and it happened naturally (no CO2 increase). What do you think caused that temperature swing?
Whatever caused that temperature swing – did it stop acting or might it still be around?
What ‘peak’ would this be, RickA?
What depth would this be?
* * *
Short-term natural variability cancels out over time (eg. on a centennial scale or less).
I see no evidence whatsoever for Holocene cyclical natural variability on the multicentennial scale. Reference please.
RickA
On a previous thread I asked you to describe the physical mechanism you insist might be responsible for modern warming.
You declined to do so.
We also touched on the problem that if some other forcing is the main driver of modern warming then CO2 forcing must be very small, which contradicts a very major chunk of well-established physics.
You didn’t address that problem either. But here you are again, with the same arguments. That’s indefensible, RickA.
BBD:
I did address it – I said I didn’t know.
And I don’t.
I am an electrical engineer – not a climate scientist.
I don’t know if the sun was warmer over the last 300 plus years or if heat came out of the ocean depths or if there have been less eruptions than normal or what.
All I know is that the Earth has warmed – starting about 1750 and it started warming before CO2 started rising.
Have humans warmed the Earth – yes.
Is all the warming since 1750 caused by humans.
No – and even climate scientists don’t think that.
Is all the warming since 1950 caused by humans – I doubt it very much.
By the way – I do think CO2 forcing is about 1/2 of what is estimated – but that does not violate physics. It violates climate models.
The models are wrong and observations are what tells us that.
It is not the direct warming from CO2 that is in question (that is based on physics) it is the feedback warming that is not panning out.
Sorry you don’t like that – but tell it to the data.
“OA – you do make me feel mature by comparison to yourself.”
Well, let’s unpack that statement a little. First it confirms that, troll-like, you are indeed here to make youself feel superior. Second the way it is worded implies that you are younger than you try to appear in your comments.
DNFTT
BBD #9:
1250 and 1730ish.
Lamb.
Yet you know more about the science and the data than the scientists. How the hell does that work?
Answer: it doesn’t work for anyone except you.
“On a previous thread I asked you to describe the physical mechanism you insist might be responsible for modern warming.
You declined to do so.”
Of course he doesn’t have any answers. RickA is just another denier idiot pretending to be interested in answers, with questions he couldn’t be bothered looking up. Then he goes “Hmmmm…” to make it look like there’s some thinking going on.
Lamb?!?!?!? Seriously? RickA is still stuck in a reconstruction, notably a SKETCH, based on poorly quantified data from the 1960s?!
And then he has the gall to complain we call him names…
MWP/LIA: flat-Earthers remain.
See origin of the MWP myth and of course
PAGES2K, especially Fig 2, and for longer periods, Marcott et al(2013).
CSLDF helped me out when Wegman+Said sued me for $2M. Thanks!
RickA
Marco has beaten me to it. Lamb’s sketch was wrong.
No, they don’t, and I explained why during our previous conversation.
So what?
Aside from being wrong, it also invalidates our understanding of palaeoclimate behaviour, which becomes almost impossible to explain if ECS to CO2 doubling is less than 2C and is a much better fit with a sensitivity of about 3C per doubling.
RickA’s arguments summed up:
“I’m not an expert on climate science. I don’t know why the climate is doing what it’s doing…
“However, I think those who are experts on climate science are incompetent and they publish results that are wrong…
“and consequently they don’t know any better than I do why is the climate is doing what it’s doing…
“THEREFORE, I can state with smug, self-serving certainty that what’s happening to the climate is not caused by massive human-caused CO2 emissions into the atmosphere…
“BECAUSE I, RickA, am a self-centered Dunning-Kruger darling who only cares about maintaining my own cherished lifestyle at any & all costs.“
Lamb is to old?
How about Yair 2013 – which said this about OHC (from the abstract):
“We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer
by 2.1 T 0.4°C and 1.5 T 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum
than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm
period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. ”
Did human emitted CO2 cause these variations – NO.
Natural variability did (the sum of all forcings and feedbacks not caused by humans).
Even your 97% consensus climate scientists don’t know all of the factors which make up natural variability – and we still are learning new things each year which cause the models to be updated and changed.
So what caused the differences in OHC over the thousands of years or over the last few hundreds?
Why did those natural forcings stop in 1950?
Answer – they did not.
At least that is the null hypothesis which must be proven wrong.
BBD #18:
The trend for ECS is headed for below 2C.
It gets lower every year.
Here – look at this chart mapping various studies values for ECS and TCR over time:
https://thelukewarmersway.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/climate_sensitivity5.png
Brainstorms #20:
I am not against anything – because you have no plan – so there is nothing to even be against yet.
What exactly do you want to do to stop CAGW?
Give me a plan!
I am against taking action without a plan – which is subjected to a vigorous cost/benefit analysis.
We cannot even do the cost/benefit without a plan.
I put up a plan on another thread and I don’t even believe in CAGW.
Not a single person even commented on the cost/benefit of my plan – it was totally ignored.
Why don’t you put forward a plan?
Or comment on mine.
First, what about protection of AGW “deniers” against harassment?
Second, why is NOAA refusing to comply with the subpoena for data on its ‘no pause in global warming’ finding? NOAA might not be claiming harassment, but IS claiming something about confidentiality and protection of the integrity of the scientific process. I don’t understand how that is a valid justification in this case.
RickA says,
“Brainstorms – you should look at the data and pass judgment.
Use your brain – don’t rely on someone else.”
No, idiot. You let experts who understand the data and the science behind the data do the interpretation. Trying to interpret data from a position of ignorance is fraught with danger and will lead to the wrong conclusions. Unfortunately, deniers are too stupid to recognize that. Like deniers who don’t understand data adjustments but KNOW that it’s fraudulent.
“Or at least get a second opinion…”
Only good if you get your opinion from trusted and expert source. Unfortunately for deniers, they usually go to WTFUWT and JoNova’s and fail on both counts.
“It started getting warmer before CO2 levels started rising”
Assertion without substantiation. But even if it were true, you’ve provide nothing qualitative or quantitative for that “natural” forcing _ what? what magnitude? how long is that cycle?
“Don’t you wonder if that natural force is still warming?”
Deluded idiot who thinks deniers are the only one “wondering” about the climate. Quick, climate scientists are waiting for you to raise that point with them!
“Do you really find it plausible that there is no more natural variation”
Whether something is “plausible” is totally irrelevant in the context of some invisible, undetectable forcing that some deniers speculate must be present. Funnily enough, a lot of deniers reject the fact that there’s been any warming anyway, as evidenced by all the “data is wrong…” and “urban heat island blah,blah, blah…” arguments out there. So they can’t even agree about the “natural” warming.
RickA
How about you explain the *simultaneous* increase in OHC in all major basins over the last half-century?
Where is the energy coming from now?
* * *
No, it doesn’t. And Tom is not a reliable guide in these matters.
re: @~23
Let’s tighten that up without all the misdirecting sophistry:
“I am against taking action… [because] …I don’t even believe in CAGW.”
— CAGW being a straw man proxy of AGW, used by people who want to discredit AGW precisely because they don’t want to disturb BAU.
As has been noted, RickA purports to accept the science (without understanding it) while arguing that scientists aren’t competent to interpret their own findings.
It is a point of meta-literacy that the research and interpretation are not so easily disentangled. (D-K syndrome is espcially pernicious in the paws of a troll.) The idea is spread on denialist sites that anyone can out science the scientists with unnuanced “common sense”, especially if you can assume that all those climate geniuses become instantly stupid once they present their summaries to the public.
RickA: It is interesting that legal process looks good sometimes (civil RICO against some climates scientists is good)(defamation legal action against opinion writer looks good).
But sometimes legal process looks bad sometimes (climate scientists having to respond to FOIA or answer congressional subpoenas).
You’re arguing here that the legal actions mentioned in your two paragraphs have — potentially at least — equal merit. Let us consider this proposition.
It equates Michael Mann defending himself against charges of fraud with Mark Steyn claiming Mann is a fraud because… why, exactly? The work that Steyn calls fraudulent has been found valid by investigators, and Mann’s conclusions have been replicated more than a dozen times by independent research teams using different data and methods.
It equates a proposed RICO action over Exxon (before its merger with Mobil) burying the work of its own scientists that found the increase of greenhouse gases a serious concern and seeking to sow sow doubt in the public mind about the work of scientists it didn’t control with ExxonMobil’s attempt to spin the story in its favor and to discredit the InsideClimateNews investigators that uncovered the deception.
In short, it equates peer-reviewed scientific work and honest reporting of corporate deception with attempts to discredit the science and dishonor the reporting.
In short, this is not about the accuracy of the picture climate scientists are painting; it is about equating their work with self-serving attempts to smear mud on the picture.
BBD #25:
You asked were the energy is coming from now.
I have always agreed that part of the warming is due to humans. So that would explain 1/2 of the warming in all basins.
The rest of the warming could be natural.
Or maybe all the warming is natural or all human caused.
Again – it is not yet possible to actually determine exactly how much of the warming since 1950 (or 1880) is due to humans and how much is natural.
How do you explain the warming pre-1950 or even pre-1880? Since natural variation always cancel out over time.
Why did it get colder from 1250 to 1730?
Why did it get warmer from 1730 to 1950?
Hell – why did it get warmer from 1910 to 1940?
And more importantly – why do you think all this warming and cooling is no longer acting on the climate today?
Which you have to think – since you think humans caused 110% of the warming since 1950.
Christopher:
You might want to brush up on the facts of the lawsuit.
Steyn never said Mann was a fraud.
He said Mann’s graph was fraudulent.
I just donated $100 to CSLDF. That’s in lieu of donating to anyone who will mount a credible challenge to Lamar Smith’s Chairmanship of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. That someone like him would be in a position like that, able to abuse his power as he is doing, makes me despair for my country.
Steyn did endorse this comment on one of his blogposts with the phrase “To sum all this up:”
“It is generally believed in the scientific community, I think, that Michael Mann is a fraud and a liar, as well as a bully.”
RickA
Until you provide a physical mechanism to account for the other half of modern OHC increase, you are dealing in unicorn farts, not physical climatology.
Where is the energy coming from?
Well, here is another thread diverted from a useful topic, worthy of discussion, including the real issue of exactly where to draw the line between between reasonable investigations and unreasonable ones.
Too bad,.
I feel almost silly to bring this up, but has anyone thought to point RickA to this graph, showing, to my knowledge, a kinda obvious reason why we know there’s a difference between pre- and post-mid 20th century warming?
http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_tsi_reconstruction.jpg
John Mashey
Microcosm
Dan #35:
No – nobody here would mention that their was more sun during the entire 20th century.
Because that is a natural source of warming, which cuts against all the warming post-1950 being due to humans.
In fact – the people here don’t even want to admit that some of the warming post-1950 could be due to human methane emissions, or carbon black changing the albedo of the snow, or land use changes, or deforestation or any number of other reasons.
They will only allow for CO2 emissions causing 110% of the warming post-1950.
It is a cognitive bias.
BBD #33:
It is either coming from outside the Earth – the sun or cosmic rays changing cloud formation, or it is energy moving around within the Earth system – coming out of the ocean depths, etc.
But surely you don’t propose the warming from 1730 to 1950 happened without the energy coming from somewhere?
That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
RickA:
“Because that is a natural source of warming, which cuts against all the warming post-1950 being due to humans.
In fact – the people here don’t even want to admit that some of the warming post-1950 could be due to human methane emissions, or carbon black changing the albedo of the snow, or land use changes, or deforestation or any number of other reasons.”
So people don’t want to admit that some of the post-1950s warming might not be caused by humans because of … “human methane emissions, or carbon black changing the albedo of the snow, or land use changes, or deforestation”
The idiocy hurts.
RickA is not an idiot. He’s an actor.
His conceit is simple: Blow smoke, then claim that since there’s confusion, we must stick to business as usual.
No matter how forceful, justified, and demonstrable anyone’s argument is, RickA will always retreat to blowing his smoke up your ass — then claim that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t blithely keep burning fossil fuels to enrich his own life.
@38. RickA :
Nope.
Pretty sure you should already know that this has been ruled out as a causative factor. Please watch :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20
In fact our daytime star has been relatively low in energy output lately – so definitely not.
(You ever heard of NASA solar satellites and missions or solar observatories dude?)
Nope and ditto. Please read and see :
http://grist.org/news/no-global-warming-isnt-caused-by-solar-flares-or-cosmic-rays/
Annnd STEEERRRIKE THREE!
Swung, missed and all out.
No. To understand why see :
http://www.oceanscientists.org/index.php/topics/ocean-warming
In actual fact, the situation there is really the reverse of what you claimed – the oceans have been soaking up extra heat that’s being trapped by atmospheric GHGs. Sure some of it maybe returned over time in say major more intense and severe El Nino’s but a lot has still gone into heating the oceans and is still being stored there too.
Yeah, it would. Funnily enough that’s NOT what any climatologist or reasonable person with any knowledge here is saying and the climatologists already know and take account of that and other factors.
Now if you are going to claim otherwise RickA well Sagan’s law (i.e.extraordinaryclaims require extraordinary supporting evidence) applies.
I’m not seeing any evidence or good reasoning from you RickA. What I am seeing from you has me very much inclined to just call you a Denialist troll sowing FUD. Prove me wrong about this if you can.
@ 23. RickA : “Give me a plan!”
Very well then; I suggest you read George Monbiots ‘Heat :How we can stop the planet Burning’ (penguin Books 2006 &2007.) plus George Marshall’s ‘Carbon Detox : Your step by step guide to getting real about climate change’ (Octopus publishing group 2007) in addition to ‘at least chapter 9 “An Honest, Effective Path” (pages
172 to 222) of NASA climatologist James Hansen’s ‘Storms of my Grandchildren’ (Bloomsbury,2009.) – although I also recommend reading that whole book.
These have plenty of good suggestions, I like Hansen’s Fee and dividend idea among many others – some of which overlap and others don’t. There are plenty of other plans and suggestions out there but those texts are a good starting point and all contain lots of plans and ideas worth adopting. Many of which would be beneficial even if Global Overheating were not a reality. E.g.weaning ourselves off polluting and non-renewable energy sources.
Doing nothing also has costs. Indeed far more severe and terrible costs – and this has been shown in a number of studies and reviews already done such as The Stern Review. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review ) Which btw contains a plan or two as well.
Its also very clear from the science that the longer we delay taking action, the more drastic the measures and plans to fight it are going to have to be to have any real effect and the less likely to reduce the damage of Global Overheating they are likely to be.
Or to use an analogy if your car flies off the road at two hundred miles an hour and is heading for a wall, the sooner you brake and take other steps to reduce the speed of impact (say, turn off the engine, spin to dissipate momentum, etc ..) the better your chances of survival are. The later you leave it, the harder you have to brake and the more deadly and damaging your inevitable crash is going to be!
You did? When and where? I don’t recall seeing that – could you provide a link please or repost it?
Perhaps there was good reason for that? Maybe it was posted late in an old thread and nobody saw it. Maybe it was considered a joke and not a serious plan? Maybe the fact that no one commented on your plan is itself a comment on the value of your plan? I don’t know, I’d have to see your plan to tell and I haven’t.
Of course, RickA, you do need to remember that this isn’t (just)) about you and that you may not be the best person to come up with a plan. Note that there are many better qualified and more expert people than you such as Stern, Hansen,Monbiot and others who have already come up with a lot of alternative plans. I’m going to go out on a very study tree limb indeed and say their plans will probably be way better than yours.
Here’s a thought – and a challenge for you RickA;, please go read the three books I’ve noted for you above and come back later (after reading all three of them) with your choice of which of those you think is best for you and others and how your plan is superior to them if you still think it is and why. I’ll wait – but I won’t hold my breath.
PS. RIckA thinking of plans did you really not see the plans and actions noted in this thread :
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/10/30/clean-energy-the-state-of-the-states/
Immediately preceding this one?
Lots of US states taking action and also planning to do so in terms of shifting from non-renewable, GHG emitting fossil fuels to solar renewable energy.
Does this really not seem like “a plan” (plans plural indeed) and actual progress towards a better world -on a whole number of fronts – to you?
“Second, why is NOAA refusing to comply with the subpoena for data on its ‘no pause in global warming’ finding?”
SN, NOAA has made ALL DATA AVAILABLE.
There is no subpoena for data, there is a demand (after the data and explanations of the data were inconvenient to Smith) to get communications. And we know from climategate why that is so desirable: you can always cherry pick a quote or abuse some discussions as saying something nefarious, when an honest, objective reading shows it doesn’t show any such thing. I still discuss with people who think a directory marked “censored” means it was deliberately hidden from the public.
RickA:
What is the name for someone who puts up a solution for a problem they think doesn’t exist?
RickA
All nonsense:
– No evidence for solar output increase sufficient to explain modern warming. In fact evidence is growing that the supposed C20th ‘grand solar maximum’ never even happened (Clette et al. 2014).
– No evidence for cloud cover change sufficient to explain modern warming. The Svensmark myth has long been debunked.
– If the heat was coming out of the ocean then OHC would be *falling*, not rising. *Think*, for once.
I repeat:
If any of these imaginary factors actually *was* a major driver of modern warming then a huge chunk of basic physics is wrong because CO2 forcing would have to be far lower than physics requires it to be.
Back in the real world, the increased radiative forcing from human activities, principally but not exclusively CO2 emission, is entirely sufficient to account for modern warming.
The onset of Northern hemisphere cooling (so-called ‘LIA’) was probably caused by increased volcanic aerosols and consequent ice albedo feedback (Miller et al. 2012). This possibly triggered a persistent change in ocean circulation which amplified the cooling. Throw in the Maunder minimum and you have plausible set of physical mechanisms for the misnomered ‘LIA’. No magic energy there.
You need physical mechanisms to explain climate change and we have them right to hand. Denying the obvious is very silly.
BBD #48
Don’t forget the ~9ppm CO2 drawdown into 1600AD, as per Law Dome.
OK, I give up on this thread: a useful topic has been totally hijacked by RickA and people willing to make thread about him.
John M
Don’t despair, the OP is the thing. The comments thread cannot detract from it.
* * *
I did think of mentioning Ruddiman and the mortality-driven CO2 draw-down in the Americas, but was too pushed for time this morning. But yes – a CO2 drop is apparently another of the drivers that worked together to sustain the so-called LIA.
To Marco #44:
Science has nothing to hide. So, why is NOAA not complying with the subpoena?
See Noevo, are you even paying attention?
So why do you then ask
THERE. IS. NO. SUBPOENA.
I’m with John Mashey. I was a little interesting in the subject matter but too many are willing to endlessly argue with the resident troll, which brings him back again and again.
I have to thank JM for providing real content and making my visit worthwhile (aside from the article itself):
I looked at all his links and suggest you do too. Congratulations to CSLDF for helping him out; will get my donation done thanks to him.
interested, not interesting … sorry
To Julian Frost #50:
No NOAA subpoena?
“NOAA Stiff-Arms House Science Committee Subpoena Questioning ‘Hiatus’ Study”
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/27102015/noaa-house-science-committee-subpoena-global-warming-hiatus-lamar-smith
Someone screwed up in saying there is no subpoena, but as for the rest, this is the same old same old fishing expedition for smear material that has been going on since Republicans went off the deep end and started taking the craziness of people like Fred Singer seriously.
Here’s the key point:
// The committee issued the subpoena on Oct. 13 and gave NOAA until Tuesday to respond. The agency responded with a letter that cites the many scientific briefings, datasets and studies it gave the committee over the past few months, but said it would not turn over emails and other deliberative research communications.
“Because the confidentiality of these communications among scientists is essential to frank discourse among scientists, those documents were not provided to the Committee,” NOAA said in a statement. “It is the end product of exchanges between scientists – the detailed publication of scientific work and the data that underpins the authors’ findings– that are key to understanding the conclusions reached.” //
Demanding scientists’ personal communications Harrassment and intimidation. What other scientists… SCIENTISTS, dammit – have to deal with this kind of treatment? None but the ones who challenge the cherished ideology of free market fundamentalists with the reality that the market can create hfs problems it can’t fix. None but the scientists whose findings threaten the profits of the richest industry on Earth.
You need to educate yourself on the history of climate denialism. Read Orekes’ “Merchant of Doubt” and Mann’s “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”. But for a quick primer and pertinent primer, read this:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/02/virginia-court-sceptic-access-climate-emails
sn, you fool:
the committee is claiming they are being denied access to the data and the methods of analysis in the study: NOAA has repeatedly pointed out those are available on-line: the committee has not made any move to access them. The clowns on the committee have made no accusations of wrongdoing or anything else. This is purely a harassing move.
More importantly: could you honestly say that the members of the science committee would have any intention of finding a person capable of understanding the analysis? I can’t , anymore than I would expect you to be able to do any math beyond simple additions and subtractions.
John Mashey #34: Well, here is another thread diverted from a useful topic
A cautionary inequality I posted on ATTP a while back:
(Tol’s time expended)/(? Tol responders’ time expended) << 1
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/more-nonsense-sorry-nonsensus-from-richard-tol/#comment-63110
Commenters and blog admins should recall that disrupting a thread with nonsense and drawing long replies to such nonsense are considered successes by some. Your time is limited and has value, so act accordingly. DNFTT
Magma, I think you’re correct. These klowns are not stupid, so they don’t need long-winded replies to “educate them”.
They are actors, running a schtick, and yanking people’s chains. DNFTT.
That is what climate science denial is all about, after all.
Um, speaking of protection of scientists, I hear that Murdoch started trashing National Geographic yesterday. Any rumblings felt at ScienceBlogs?
To dean #54:
“the committee is claiming they are being denied access to the data and the methods of analysis in the study: NOAA has repeatedly pointed out those are available on-line…”
Are the NOAA *emails and internal communications* available online?
Because I understood the committee to be subpoenaing NOAA emails and internal communications, not data and the methods of analysis.
I have no idea if private communications are on-line, but an intelligent response (which you can’t provide, of course) would be that they are not.
An intelligent question would be why, absent any accusation of wrongdoing, private communications are needed when the science committee is interested in the data and analysis, as they claim to be.
@#62:
// An intelligent question would be why, absent any accusation of wrongdoing, private communications are needed when the science committee is interested in the data and analysis, as they claim to be. //
I think we’ve already covered that. To create a climate of intimidation among scientists whose findings challenge the cherished ideological belief of many in government that the market can do no wrong, not to mention the profits of the richest industry on Earth. Also, to fish for taken-out-of-context smear material – a tactic which we all know has been very successful in the past.
I fully realize that, and agree. My point was that habitual science deniers like sn (he’s never met a subject he doesn’t claim is false: evolution, modern cosmology, geology’s dating of the earth, science based medical procedures, on and on and on) harbor conspiracy theories and in their minds such investigations are justified.
Submitted at 1:35 a.m. EST, 11/7/15:
To dean #62:
Me: “Are the NOAA *emails and internal communications* available online? Because I understood the committee to be subpoenaing NOAA emails and internal communications, not data and the methods of analysis.”
You: “I have no idea if private communications are on-line, but an intelligent response (which you can’t provide, of course) would be that they are not. An intelligent question would be why, absent any accusation of wrongdoing, private communications are needed when the science committee is interested in the data and analysis, as they claim to be.”
But if NOAA is a federal government agency, paid for by my tax dollars and subject to FOIA, as well as to subpoenas, why should the NOAA communications be considered “private”?