"Climategate" bites the dust.

[dcraig1]

The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee investigation of the "climategate" emails exonerates Dr Phil Jones head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason ... to challenge the scientific consensus ... that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."


http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/30/house-of-commons-exonerates-climate-scientist-phil-jones/

The full text of the report is here:

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf

One would hope that this puts an end to the grubby campaign of slander, misrepresentation and straight out lying that has characterized the vilification of climate scientists.

Phil Jones deserves an apology from large sections of the media.

 

[maiden22]

Sweet! :clap:

It's been too long since we've had a climategate rumble. I'm off to fetch THE CAN .

 

[Ingot54]

The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee investigation of the "climategate" emails exonerates Dr Phil Jones head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason ... to challenge the scientific consensus ... that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."


http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/30/house-of-commons-exonerates-climate-scientist-phil-jones/

The full text of the report is here:

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf

One would hope that this puts an end to the grubby campaign of slander, misrepresentation and straight out lying that has characterized the vilification of climate scientists.

Phil Jones deserves an apology from large sections of the media.

Sorry Phil ...

Once again Craig attempts to highlight himself through beginning yet another ... (yawn) ... oh, what was I saying?

Oh yes ... this thread will get about one more response (predictably from it's author) then die a rapid death through being a non-issue ... as before. We have been through all there is to say ... thanks for coming ... goodnight.

Greece looks to be all set to raise the capital to help it avoid imminent bankruptcy.
Gold is ranging sideways, but could be consolidating as the USD appears to be weakening due to the M1 figures now sur[passing 2 trillion.

Oil is locked into a range ... the DOW is about to crack through 11,000 any day soon, and Goldman sachs have cornered the Carbon trading pool, in anticipation of another attempt to float a global swindle based on the faux AGW story.

 

[Adamus]

It seems that the general public and the media around the world really found a catalyst to unleash their displeasure at the whole climate change situation and the costs to be incurred. It looks like it has set back public opinion by at least five years.

That the enquiry into the scientists at UEA and their emailing shenanigans has found nothing to alter the effective scientific consensus, means nothing. The result is too late for the news and too late to avert public discontent.

I'm still surprised though that some people can see a conspiracy there. There ain't no conspiracy. There's just a world with too many people being far far too efficient at consuming resources and depleted the global commons.

 

[Benton D Struckcheon]

Well, there is that small matter of an island disappearing between India & Bangladesh. I guess there'll be no war over that, which is a good thing.
Of course, decent portions of Bangladesh might be next, which wouldn't be so good. I guess razzing someone over an email or three is more fun than having to think about where to put a couple hunnerd million desperate people.

 

[Adamus]

Actually India has already thought about what on earth to do if Bangladesh sinks beneath the waves.

http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2009/09/05/3229672-death-on-the-great-wall-of-india-indias-2500-mile-border-fence-around-bangladesh

So due to the wall, you can expect the Bangladeshis will be forced to leave by boat.

 

[Ingot54]

Well, there is that small matter of an island disappearing between India & Bangladesh. I guess there'll be no war over that, which is a good thing.
Of course, decent portions of Bangladesh might be next, which wouldn't be so good. I guess razzing someone over an email or three is more fun than having to think about where to put a couple hunnerd million desperate people.

Well ... I am already wrong - there IS more than one post to this thread! :clap:

Now look, let me try to use a little physics here ... and common sense.

Let me first of all ask a question ... if all the oceans of the world are interconnected, (and they are) how is it that some amazing piece of new science allows the oceans to rise ONLY IN THE SUNDERBANS GROUP???

These islands have been SUBMERGING themselves for years, NOT drowning in rising seas!!!

The most ridiculous claims ever ... "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming."

So ... how much did the seas rise? 2 metres??

Spread this around the planet evenly, because of the inter-connectedness of the oceans, and that equates to how much volume of water???

And that volume of water came from where ... melting snow/ice/glaciers?

No, Smiffins, the oceans did not rise up in the night anywhere and swallow ANY islands. It might just be possible that we have had an increase in movement in the earth's tectonic plates. I think the "science is settled" that tectonic plates rise up over/buckle under each other, forming mountain ranges on one hand, and dragging land mass deeper under the oceans as they move, on the other hand.

Why else would the rising waters pick on this (New Moore Island) little plot of mud, and not flood, say, The Maldives, where the oceans have remained at static levels for 1250 years, I am told?

If the rising seas took out trees etc that are a few metres high, why didn't those
few metres of rising seas"also take out places along the world's coastlines, that are also less than 2 metres above sea level?

For example - a 2 metre island disappears, but it is business as usual in downtown Bangladesh - a land mass sensitive to even a 10 cm rise in sea levels!!!

You can see how weak the rising seas argument is, and any attempt to link this to climate change broadly, let alone Anthropological Global Warming specifically, will not carry. The AGW alarmists are just Leopards - same spots, different story, same agenda. If there is truth in the AGW argument, why have the worlds political leaders dropped it like a hot potato? Why has Australia's PM declined any further involvement, in an election year, with the scam?

Look folks - I am sure we all have more to do than sit here and listen to Chicken Little Craig, avow and declare that the sky is not coming down to meet the sea, the sea is rising up to meet the sky!!!

Have a little fun ... check this link for a lighter view of it all - and just maybe, the truth about it all!!!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/...onsense-ap-gets-nutty-over-loss-of-a-sandbar/


Don't you think it is time to question these things a little - and more to the point, question the folks who are pushing this dribble on to you? Why would Craig purposefully attempt to mislead folks about rising sea levels swallowing ONE SINGLE ISLAND, when right next door is a land mass at extreme risk of even a 10 cm rise in sea level.

Craig has been caught out this time, straight up telling fibs to support his dead agenda.

Nice one Craig ... liar!

EDIT: Craig didn't say that - apologies - but Benton, you do need to get your research sorted a little better - this one was glaring.

 

[Benton D Struckcheon]

Simple, glib, and wrong.

When he started looking at regional effects, Mitrovica recalls, some climate-change deniers were noting that sea-level rise was happening at different rates in different regions, arguing that this proved there was no global trend, and thus no global warming. That was already a bogus argument, but now that he and others have begun investigating the gorilla in the living room, it’s even more absurd. The science is so straightforward, he says, that “if you saw that sea level was rising uniformly around the world, it would be proof that the big ice sheets are not melting.”

Oh well.

 

[dcraig1]

CSIRO has an excellent web site explaining sea level research:

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/

 

[Ingot54]

Simple, glib, and wrong.
Oh well.

Benton, Craig will tell you that my physics is correct - it is NOT possible to have a higher sea level in one part of the earth consistently (exclusive of tidal influence) than in another part. "Consistently" being the operative word.

Your link did not work for me, so I took a section of your quote and pasted it into Google. It led me to this link: http://www.climatecentral.org/break...sea_level_rise_it_will_vary_greatly_by_region which proves my point.

In essence, your point is that there is an APPEARANCE of sea level rising in one area MORE than in another. This can ONLY be attributed to land mass rising or sinking - a phenomenon that has always occurred since the earth became the earth. And as I explained earlier, this is due to the movement of tectonic plates relative to each other.

The link I just posted explains this in easy terms:

One factor, which they’ve have been aware of for decades, is that the land is actually rising in some places, including northern Canada and Scandinavia, which are still recovering from the crushing weight of the Ice Age glaciers that melted 10,000 years ago. That makes sea-level increases less than the global average would suggest, since these land areas are rising a few millimeters a year.

Around the periphery of where the glaciers sat, by contrast — places like Chesapeake Bay and the south of England — the land was actually squeezed upward during the Ice Age by the downward pressure nearby. The resulting “glacial forebulge” has been sinking back ever since, also at an average rate of a few millimeters a year, so sea level rise is greater than average in these regions.

And in some coastal areas — most notably along the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana — the land is falling as well: Thanks to massive oil and gas extraction, the continental shelf is collapsing like a deflated balloon. “The rate of subsidence measured at Grand Isle, Louisiana,” says Rui Ponte, of the private consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc, “is almost 10 millimeters per year, compared with two or three in other areas.” That’s especially problematic for a city like New Orleans, which already lies partly below sea level.

Now I am not really as one-eyed as it may appear on this - there is plenty in that article with which I agree, and this DOES support your view that the "sea level is rising". But there are other reasons for the illusion - and this has to do with the shifting of land mass in a vertical moment.

Previously there WERE "simple and glib" remarks made regarding the "melting of the Polar Ice Caps" which would result in flooding and land inundation by rising sea levels, but until I read this article, I was not aware of the "other" reasons sea levels may "appear" to be rising.

Indeed, I would advance to you that neither were the alarmists actively promoting these secondary effects, as reasons for an apparent sea level rise. I would also contend that until now, no alarmists were using the movement of land mass, or the "piling up" of water due to the movement of ocean currents, or the effects of prevailing winds "pushing a wall of water several centimetres high" in one direction.

Until more work is done on this, I will need to fall back on simple physics. Using the simplest of analogies - that water in a glass at rest will have a uniform depth across its surface, notwithstanding the meniscus.

I agree that the global earth is a vastly more complex "glass of water" which also obeys the laws of physics, though the forces on an "earth" are thankfully not viewed in your average glass of water.

Had the sea levels alone been responsible for the submersion of New Moore Island, then we would certainly have seen these effects in the surrounding landscape ie Bangladesh.

We did not. There has been no surge of ocean water to cover the island, and if there had been, then certainly Bangladesh would be a little more in the news by now!

What is happening there is that the island has been submerged,0 as the land mass on which it sits, is being dragged down by the movement of the tectonic plate on which it sits. Other explanations say that New Moore Island is a "mud island" formed in the Bay of Bengal following the impact of the Bhola Cyclone in 1970.

The very fact of the recent emergence of the island (1970) and its recent disappearance, has as much to do with AGW as prawns have to do with icecream! In geophysical terms, the island is an aberration - unstable in the scheme of things to say the least, and transient in its existence in whatever terms you choose.

To link the disappearance of this unstable bit of mud with some imagined rise in sea level, is an extraordinary leap of faith, and one which smells just a little desperate ... once again.

To use a sinking island as proof of rising sea levels is "simple, glib, and WRONG".

I hope we are able to reach some common agreement in this issue, Benton - to me it is clearly NOT rising seas, but sinking lands. I do agree that it is possible, on a global level, for sea water to be higher (temporarily) in one area than in another, but that over time, this situation would "right itself - at least in a transient way, and we would see "normal" levels at some point. Tides are a common example - and there are others in the article linked above.

Under a "moving water" scenario, I would expect to see the re-emergence of New Moore Island at some time in the very near future. Of course we will NOT see this - the LAND has submerged ... the oceans did NOT rise.

 

[Ingot54]

CSIRO has an excellent web site explaining sea level research:

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/

Craig - I do not wish to engage you on the previous sublime level - mainly because of your inability to respond to questions, or evidence presented to the contrary view of your position on AGW.

To put it simply, my view is that CC is CYCLICAL, and nothing will move me from that view. I have very good reasons for believing in the cyclical nature of climate variance, but I do not wish to preach to the heathen here - deaf ears are not a good audience.

However, I take your point that the graph is authentic - having the CSIRO logo attached. Interesting that sea levels are shown to have been rising since 1870 on that chart.

Interesting that sea levels also rose at a faster rate between 1930 and 1950. So the current slope is nothing new - indeed it shows a slower rise than in the period I mentioned.

What does bug me, and precipitated my previous responses to your arguments, is that in taking an intractable view (that AGW is a fact) actually is extremely harmful to other avenues of scientific investigation - (that CC is cyclical, and we need to be focusing on the ebb and flow of that sequelae).

The AGW debate has hijacked the science of CC, and diverted funds and resources (knowledge, brainpower and experience) from other practical solutions to potential problematic areas.

Rather than worrying about proving that AGW is somehow responsible for the natural erosion of coastlines around the planet, and blaming AGW for "rising sea levels", why not simply get on with the task of moving the infrastructure, population and resources away from "at risk" areas?

We are not even prepared for a single tsunami on Australia's eastern seaboard - let alone inundation by cyclonic tidal surges, and natural attrition of beach-front real-estate. I would think any government with their hearts in the right place would be planning for this geo-demographic event - that of moving the population to "residences of refuge".

The first step would be to issue a blanket voiding of insurance on all beachfront properties, and a phasing out of insurance cover for all coastal property within 100 metres of the shore-line (or some other strategic distance to be studied and decided upon).

Nothing makes people wake up and take notice faster than a threat to their hip pocket, sadly, and this single action would be all it takes to begin the process.

But I find, so far, that AGW has nothing to do with the historic changes in sea levels - CSIRO seems, in that article, not to have advanced any reason for such rises over the past 140 years.

Is it due to prevailing on-shore winds getting stronger? (N0)
Is it due to shifting ocean currents? (N0)
Is it due to sinking land mass over that time? (Possible)
Is it due to melting polar icecaps over the past 140 years?(Unlikely - we would have heard much more, much earlier, about it)
Is it due to erosion of beaches?(No - the measurements are vertical, not horizontal)

One of the arguments that rails against the melting of the glaciers as a source of general influence on rising seas, is the theory of Post-Glacial-Rebound, where the land mass hosting the melting glacier rises in rebound, and the "fore-bulge regions" are sinking - giving rise to an illusion of rising/falling sea levels. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_drives_geol.html

There is much on that site worth reading - it is an interesting and informative read to be sure. Neil White shows many of the short-term/longer-term influences on sea levels, and I find that educational. But I also find a few things to challenge - eg the rise in sea levels since 1840, by 13.5 centimetres, as measured by a mark on a rock at Port Arthur, Tasmania. Maybe I am alone in thinking that.

I think there are other reasons so far not explored, or possibly dismissed because of a bias towards the belief in AGW, for the 13.5 cm "rise" measurement.

Anyway - thanks for the link.

I am not going to participate further in this thread, because it will degenerate due to the many biases and views, and the hypotheticals and agenda's held by URL's and individuals, and governments.

We, the people (sheeple) will be mislead and brainwashed, as long as there is money to be made from the so-called AGW influence on CC. Alarm bells should have been ringing as soon as Goldman Sachs pushed their way to the front of the queue, in snapping up the ownership of the Carbon Credit trading instruments.

Doesn't that mean anything to you? (Don't answer that - it was rhetorical - but I have said my last word.)

Thanks for the thread ... but I'll pass on it now.

 

[oiltanker]

does it put an end to the missing weather stations problem?

given global warming is being promoted by the those who own the carbon exchanges and those who want to tax one should be cynical.

even the bbc have stopped talking about it as if there was 'no doubt'.

 

[shadowninja]

There's just a world with too many people being far far too efficient at consuming resources and depleted the global commons.

This is the issue. If there were just 10 humans on the planet, we wouldn't have the problem. Until we seriously look at reducing our growth rate, all our efforts are just a sticking plaster on a 10 inch gash in the abdomen of Planet Earth.

I don't mean crazy-arsed population control like China implements (although that would solve the problem). I am talking about educating people so that they decide that just one child (or two - research into family sizes would have to be carried out) is enough.

We are like cancerous cells.

 

[Adamus]

I don't understand you guys discussing all this stuff here. I keep reading the threads (stupidly) hoping to read something interesting, but all I find is a bunch of amateurs in this field discussing the science as if their careers depended on it, sniping around the edges of unimportant debating points.

The world is warming up and who knows what is going to happen and it ain't gonna be pretty. And if it isn't climate change, it's going to be something else - there are just too many people on this planet, as has been known since Malthus first pointed it out in 1798.

The scientific consensus may be under more attack than usual these days, but science is not about to roll over and die. It's so ingrained into our society that it would require some kind of revolution to seperate our governing mechanisms from it.

The real debate is what should be done about it. You're perfectly entitled to say 'nothing' - especially here on this forum, away from the PC world of election campaign politics. Just say you don't like having the responsibility to act on it foisted upon you. At least then the guys from Tuvalu will stop traipsing around from summit to summit whingeing about it and will go home and build some boats.

 

[oiltanker]

..The world is warming up...

based on data from warm weather stations and excluding the cold ones. which is why its a scandal. a whole generation have been brainwashed to think all this stuff is fact and truth. when it is neither.

maurice strong [sits on carbon exchanges] and his one world religion stuff want to make out anyone using carbon is a 'sinner' who needs to be 'punished' through carbon credits. which is the same as taxing air. saying anyone who breaths air is a sinner.

greenland is called greenland not because how it is now but how it was 1000 years ago.

 

[Adamus]

So you're saying there is a conspiracy which has managed to totally subvert the process of scientific peer review?

It makes good fiction, but seriously, no I don't think so. On the one hand, you're saying that some people have been very very successful at a fairly awesome piece of skulduggery which has led to us all believing something completely made-up, or on the other hand, CO2 & CH4 make the atmosphere heat up, and the growing world population of x billion are busy pumping it out there.

Never mind the warm weather stations and the local variations in sea level and Greenland and whatever, which is simpler and more likely?

 

[Benton D Struckcheon]

I don't understand you guys discussing all this stuff here. I keep reading the threads (stupidly) hoping to read something interesting, but all I find is a bunch of amateurs in this field discussing the science as if their careers depended on it, sniping around the edges of unimportant debating points.

The world is warming up and who knows what is going to happen and it ain't gonna be pretty. And if it isn't climate change, it's going to be something else - there are just too many people on this planet, as has been known since Malthus first pointed it out in 1798.

The scientific consensus may be under more attack than usual these days, but science is not about to roll over and die. It's so ingrained into our society that it would require some kind of revolution to seperate our governing mechanisms from it.

The real debate is what should be done about it. You're perfectly entitled to say 'nothing' - especially here on this forum, away from the PC world of election campaign politics. Just say you don't like having the responsibility to act on it foisted upon you. At least then the guys from Tuvalu will stop traipsing around from summit to summit whingeing about it and will go home and build some boats.

Malthus was wrong. History since 1798 pretty conclusively proves that one.
If that's not enough for you, nothing will be.
Climate change is real because it is. So is progress. I don't understand folks who think the world isn't warming, or who think it can be attributed to some other cause than civilization and its side effects. I also don't understand people who think there's some sort of hard limit on progress.
Malthus would have been completely unable to imagine a planet supporting billions on billions, but that wasn't due to the impossibility of it, as we are living that reality. It was due, quite simply, to his lack of imagination.
The first sign you would have that Malthus might maybe be right would be a sustained - as in multi-generational - rise in commodity prices generally. This hasn't happened. The only commodity I know of that rises consistently in real terms over that long a period of time is oil. In general, over periods greater than twenty years, commodity prices trail general inflation, which is what's supposed to happen.
Right now, we're in one of those periods when commodity prices are rising faster than inflation, and if the past is any guide, that will continue for another decade before it ends. After that, Malthus will go right back to being wrong, and commodity prices will be lower than most other prices when the next period where they outperform begins. The reason is that civilization advances by finding new ways to use things, and that by definition means that the old commodities that were used with the old ways become worth less than they were before. That also means that most predictions about us running out of some commodity are wrong, because long before we run out of it, we're using something else.
Oil might be an exception, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Also, it might actually take making a hundred or two million people homeless for everyone to finally admit to the reality of human-induced warming, but that doesn't mean the problem won't be solved. It just means that on this subject, for whatever reason, people are a lot more stubborn when it comes to just plain admitting what's actually happening, and would rather act the fool than be wise (see my sig).
Malthus would still be wrong.

 

[dcraig1]

does it put an end to the missing weather stations problem?

There is no "problem" as such. Denialists have made a lot of noise about the fact that here are more temperature stations in the historical data than in the current ongoing data held by NOAA in the Global Historical Climatology network. The reason is that much of the historical data comes from stations that no longer exist and is derived from over 30 historical sources and much of it digitized from old paper records. The current "real time" data comes from three sources, the most important of which is the World Meteorological Organization which in turn gets it from the national meteorological services of member countries. It is the latter that choose which station data is sent to the WMO. There is no conspiracy by NOAA, NASA GISS, WMO or anybody else.

This has all been made perfectly plain many years ago in a paper by Petersen (1997) http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/Peterson-Vose-1997.pdf . Denialist bloggers should do their homework.

Tamino has shown on his blog: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/global-update/#more-2382 that a global temperature record constructed only with the stations still reporting and with a long history is for practical purposes the same as that constructed from all stations.

Furthermore, the temperature records compiled by CRU, NASA GISS and NOAA from weather station data are in substantial agreement with the completely independent satellite temperature records compiled by UAH and RSS.

There is negligible chance that the temperature records are substantially wrong

given global warming is being promoted by the those who own the carbon exchanges and those who want to tax one should be cynical.

The history of climate science goes back over 150 years. In 1989 James Hansen in his presentation to the US Congress warned of the dangers of CO2 induced global warming. James Hansen is scathing in his comments about cap and trade and advocates a substantial straight tax on carbon that is revenue neutral with proceeds from the tax distributed to the populace as a "dividend".

Above all else it is scientists who have warned of the dangers of GHG emissions and the need to reduce them.

The book "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart shows the development of the science long before carbon trading ever was mentioned. The book is also free online: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/

It's all about the science - not GS's ambitions though the latter deserve rigorous scrutiny.

even the bbc have stopped talking about it as if there was 'no doubt'.

Yes, it is about time that the BBC learned to properly distinguish credible sources.

 

[dcraig1]

..The world is warming up...

based on data from warm weather stations and excluding the cold ones. which is why its a scandal. a whole generation have been brainwashed to think all this stuff is fact and truth. when it is neither.

This nonsense has been spread by a denialist blogger by the name of E. M. Smith (aka Chiefy). His ignorance is breathtaking. The global temperature record is not derived by adding up absolute temperatures - it is constructed from temperature anomalies ie the difference between the recorded temperature and a mean. Mostly this is reported in charts as the global temperature anomaly.

The records have been constructed through years of painstaking work by highly qualified people. It is ludicrous to suggest that such an obvious problem would have been overlooked.

Furthermore the trend shown by the weather station record is very similar to the trend shown by the completely independent satellite record.

maurice strong [sits on carbon exchanges] and his one world religion stuff want to make out anyone using carbon is a 'sinner' who needs to be 'punished' through carbon credits. which is the same as taxing air. saying anyone who breaths air is a sinner.

The usefulness of cap and trade as a solution is certainly fair game for debate. But it has no bearing whatsoever on whether the world is warming and humans are responsible. The science is perfectly clear on these issues.

 

[Adamus]

Benton, don't tell me you wrote a PhD on Malthus? Maybe you know a lot more about him and his theses than I do, but from what I know, which is pretty much what is in the wikipedia entry for him, and taking into account what you just said, he failed to see 2 things, not just the one 'human endeavour' factor you mention.

The other factor is the massive overuse and degradation of the free resources which we take for granted - fish in the sea, a pleasant climate, water in the rivers, soil on the land, primary rainforest on the equator (global commons).

These two factors act against each other - while society's prospect on a graph directly proportional to our endeavour, the chart will be dragged down by the negative impact of ecosystem degradation.

When Malthus wrote his treatise, everything was rosy in the garden compared to now, and let me don my eco-alarmist hat: the fish are going fast, the climate is being destabilised, soils are being eroded, water cycles are being interrupted, forests are being depleted, deserts are encroaching. It's all kind of happening a bit too fast to avoid a big drawdown on the quality of life that society has to offer.

Faith in human endeavour is great and necessary, but to deny that there's a big chance we're going to take a big hit is akin to thinking that a bull market's here to stay.