24.12.09

 

Climategate


Three references I've found useful on Climategate:

George Monbiot: Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away

George Monbiot: The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it's working

Marc Sheppard: Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline

The last is by a climate change denier, but contains the only clear explanation I've seen of what the leaked e-mails refer to as "Mike's Nature Trick". Anyone know of an explanation from a more reputable source? Or what current science makes of what the first IPCC report referred to as the "Medieval Warming Period"?

Comments:
Using terms like "climate change denier" is an immediate put off. You have a pre-drawn political conclusion and you're asking for support for that conclusion rather than analysing the facts and drawing a conclusion from the available evidence.

You're posting this on the haskell blog so you're probably clever. Download the original ZIP file and read some of the source code and e-mails first hand. You'll find it enlightening (as I did).

The term "Medieval Warming Period" is a well known term among historians who have studied the relevant period and the term significantly pre-dates any discussion about climate change.

Similarly, the "Little Ice Age" did actually freeze over to a depth of 11 inches for people to ice skate. There are actually paintings of this and the River Thames Frost Fairs (which stopped in the 1800s) if you care to look.

None of which, of course, says that we are not putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. Nor does it prove anything about whether the globe is warming or cooling, nor whether this is man made or not.

The attempts to remove these periods in the time since IPCC AR1 and 4 though (which you can find a lot about in the CRU e-mails) says an awful lot about the ethics of the people involved in presenting the data. If the problem is so clear cut and such an impending disaster - why cook the books at all? The science should stand on its own legs.
 
The go-to site I use for most of these situations is Real Climate, which is written by a number of climate scientists. They've been following the climategate stuff and responding to the sillier claims, as well as rounding up responses from other climate researchers. Personally I think Monbiot overstates the importance of the emails. The most "scandalous" thing the denialists could find was a discussion regarding removing inaccurate proxy data. Well, hold the front page...
 
Dougal: The most "scandalous" thing in the e-mails is a systemic perversion of the peer review process. Read this:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_climatology_conspiracy.html

These are the same guys who run real climate.org. :)

There is nothing wrong with following realclimate, btw - but it is only one view point. It is more useful to read realclimate *in conjunction* with climateaudit.
 
You Mr. Wadler are like Mr. Haszeldine, yet another Edinburgh rent-seeking opportunist, who will sell his own birthright for a mess of potage.

It's the SUN Stupid !
 
Philip Wadler, Professor of Theoretical Computer Science !

See this YouTube video set by Dr. Svensmark. It's the Clouds which control weather, and not the other way about, says Svensmark. One thing is absolutely certain, "Computer Theory" has NOTHING to do with climate change, and computer programs cannot predict the future of a stochastic processes.

Stick to the X-Box 360 Prof. Wadler !

http://is.gd/5AFvy
 
Nonsense. In all science there is a tension between scientific integrity, the need to publish and personal agendas.

All professors know that and, if anything, are more suited to place an opinion than the average layman.

Its a common story where all what is left is just to find out who did what, why, for what reason, and what of the arguments are sound, or possibly valid.
 
The very fact that you use the phrase "climate change denier" means that you should be ignored if not condemned. It is patently offensive.
 
Why is it every post about climate change brings out the ad homonym attacks?

I think the term 'Climate change denier' was appropriate where I used it, given the stance taken by that author.

One point not mentioned in this discussion, which is relevant to my expertise, is the use of computer models. These are not always published in an open way suited to review, and they should be. The Open Software movement provides many frameworks suited to this purpose.
 
As long as comments to this blog note is already blotted please admit me to ask one small utterly offtopic question:

what *EXACTLY* adjective "syntactic" mean?

as in
"A Syntactic Approach to Type Soundness"
"A Model for Syntactic Control of Interference"
"Syntactic type soundness results for the region calculus"
"Principals in Programming Languages: A Syntactic Proof Technique"
 
Regarding open source climate models, take a look at this blog entry by Nick Barnes. Nick was a colleague of mine when we worked on MLWorks at Harlequin and he is now working on a Open Source reconstruction of the GISTEMP code.

http://nickbarnes.livejournal.com/116411.html

http://clearclimatecode.org/

My own comments on the leaked CRU e-mails refer to the assumption that all scientific data is openly published.

http://henry-the-cow.livejournal.com/90988.html
 
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