43 thoughts on “Et Tu, NASA?”

  1. And with all of your qualifications as a climatologist I’m sure you’re the man who’d know.

    Using an averaged number to represent a region does not strike me as a smoking gun here. If there are four weather stations a few miles apart from one another, and they all report temperatures in the mid-70’s, for instance, then…wouldn’t the average of those numbers return a temperature in the mid-70’s for that region? And…wouldn’t that be accurate?

    Deniers accuse the scientists of only reporting data that supports their preexisting biases, but it looks to me like the deniers are guilty of just that themselves. Grabbing at any straw that drifts their way, however flimsy.

  2. From D’Aleo’s report:

    In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half.

    And

    In the United States, 90% of the first 1000 of the 1221 US Climate stations surveyed by surfacestations.org were rated poor to very poorly sited with warm bias exceeding 1C according to the government’s own criteria.

    And

    China had 100 stations in 1950, over 400 in 1960 then only 35 by 1990.

    And

    High elevation stations have disappeared from the data base. Stations in the Andes and Bolivia have vanished. Temperatures for these areas are now determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the coast or in the Amazon.

    But hey, there’s no smoking gun there. Nothing to see, move along please…

  3. And with all of your qualifications as a climatologist I’m sure you’re the man who’d know.

    I think anybody who claims qualifications as a climatologists should be laughed at. Certainly those that use the term “denier” should be consider zealots, may apt to believe whatever a climatologist told them than care about science.

  4. The climatologists had them shut down, so’s they could lie to us all and sell us wholesale to our new Solar Panel Manufacturing Masters!

    Christ.

  5. We don’t have a fancy term for them yet. Biologists have “Creationist” for people who deny Evolution, for example.

  6. But I should point out to Rand, who I’m sure knows this, that large parts of NASA (in areas far away from the DC complex) are embarrassed by what by what some civil servants try to pass off as science.

  7. Deniers accuse the scientists of only reporting data that supports their preexisting biases, but it looks to me like the deniers are guilty of just that themselves. Grabbing at any straw that drifts their way, however flimsy.

    Sooooo… Both sides are grasping at straws. But lets make CO2 a pollutant anyway, hell people exhale it, and we all know how BAD people are for the planet.
    Flimsy, very flimsy.
    Unless you’re a closet member of vhemt, in which case I encourage you to act on your convictions.

  8. Didn’t you learn about the Greenhouse Effect in elementary school, Curt? It’s only a pollutant in certain concentrations.

    Give someone too much water and they’ll die of water intoxication.

  10. “Give someone too much water and they’ll die of water intoxication.”

    So now you claim water is a pollutant.

  13. Most things in excess (in your body…or the environment) are, in fact, pollutants. You are correct, Puck. But I fail to see how that renders the term meaningless.

  14. Didn’t you learn about the Greenhouse Effect in elementary school, Curt? It’s only a pollutant in certain concentrations.

    The main atmospheric ingredient required for the greenhouse effect is water vapor. And the concentrations required for CO2 to be rationally considered a pollutant are orders of magnitude greater than any sane person is suggesting are possible.
    Christ, you’re incoherent.

  15. @Ethan: “We don’t have a fancy term for them yet. Biologists have “Creationist” for people who deny Evolution, for example.”

    You’re welcome to call me a heretic.

  17. “Heretic” would be religious terminology. It seems to me that your position on this issue is more akin to the position of the clergy after the publication of On the Origin of Species, which would make ME the heretic.

  18. We don’t have a fancy term for them yet. Biologists have “Creationist” for people who deny Evolution, for example.

    How about “non-dupes”?

    “Heretic” would be religious terminology.

    And your point?

    It seems to me that your position on this issue is more akin to the position of the clergy after the publication of On the Origin of Species

    Except that none of the clergy were threatened with excommunication for failing to embrace Darwin as the new messiah.

  19. Darwin’s Origin of Species
    Arrhenius’s Greenhouse Effect
    Calling people, with no noted religion, Creationist

    I see a trend.

  20. I was accused of approaching climate change in the manner one approaches a religion. Someone asked me to call them a Heretic, and I was just pointing out that that would be illogical.

    And read my post again Leland, I didn’t call anyone a Creationist. I do, however, think the people expressing doubt about climate change are lacking some understanding of the way science works. At least that’s the only explanation I can come up with, given that I’ve looked at all of the same things they have and see no cause for concern. Well…outside of concern for our survival as an industrial, capitalist society, given the reality of climate change.

  21. Actually, it’s the people who talk about the science being “settled,” and “consensus,” and who conspire to keep dissenting views out of the journals, and hide their data and methods, and want to punish “deniers,” and think that there is a moral imperative to cut down our carbon footprint (but who buy themselves indulgences with the carbon credit scam, just like the priests who Luther railed against) who don’t understand how science works. They understand very well how religions work, though.

  22. But I see no evidence of any of that, except perhaps the carbon credit scams. And like I said, I’ve looked at the same reports you have, apparently. I still suspect that what you make of these things depends more on what your preconceptions are than the content itself. What looks like funny business to you looks like data normalization and a (maybe unprofessional in tone) back-and-forth to me.

    I agree that the science isn’t settled, but I do disagree about the degree to which that’s true. It seems to me that the broad strokes are there, and are well proved. It’s been a matter of refining their conclusions, as with all scientific theories.

  23. You see a lot of evidence of that. You simply don’t recognize it.

    I’ve looked at the same reports you have, apparently.

    Have you looked at the computer codes? They’re worthless.

  24. “I still suspect that what you make of these things depends more on what your preconceptions are than the content itself.”

    Indeed.

  25. “Using an averaged number to represent a region does not strike me as a smoking gun here. If there are four weather stations a few miles apart from one another, and they all report temperatures in the mid-70’s, for instance, then…wouldn’t the average of those numbers return a temperature in the mid-70’s for that region? And…wouldn’t that be accurate?”

    Erm… no.

  31. You recommend reading a whole article by the fraudulent Jim Hansen?

    Sorry, life is too short.

    Shrug, sums it up about you really.

    Are you going to defend the squaring of the imaginary numbers, Dave?

    Nope.

    Should I?

    I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing put to bed by some more accurate models from the third parties who are interested which will prove that the data doesn’t show warming.

    I’m not expecting to see it, but I’m sure that it will keep a lot of people who would otherwise be saying dumb things about politics and so forth busy for months before they find out they end up with similar results no matter how many “tricks” they end up employing.

    Call it a hunch. I might be wrong, have been before. But not always, compared to you I’m a fecking genius on these things (Iraq, the US election etc…)

    Oh, yeah, you should read Too Big Too Fail too, but you’ll probably think life is too short for facts too.

    Oh, Happy New Year!

  32. I’m not expecting to see it, but I’m sure that it will keep a lot of people who would otherwise be saying dumb things about politics and so forth busy for months before they find out they end up with similar results no matter how many “tricks” they end up employing.

    Careful, Dave! That’s starting to sound like real science! Imagine if that had happened in the first place.

  33. Ethan,

    If this is the best you can come up with, I suggest you start attending a few more classes, perhaps taking a few methods courses as a first step.

    The bulk of the article you pass along is a huge strawman exercise, attacking positions far beyond those taken by the individuals that Mojib seeks to rebut. The overuse of aggregate data (his ‘global temperature vs CO2’ graph was especially droll, and is an almost textbook case of misusing numbers), and the modeling results he provides do not even track backwards properly, which gives very little confidence in their ability to predict future events.

    Take a look at the leaked computer code and reread some of those emails (many of which bear directly upon the efforts of the CRU mafia and their enablers to keep opposing views out of the journals and thus build a ‘consensus’), then take a good long look at who benefits from all of this. Suggesting that throwing out 90% or more of the temperature measurements (including almost all those that don’t fit the desired results) and then averaging the others (including numerous often widely separated sites), ignoring the UHI effect, and failing to validate the measurements properly (surfacestations.org does a wonderful job of debunking that) is at least reason for skepticism if not outright rejection, particularly when such concerns are met with the sort of hostility that the emails show.

    Daveon’s snark notwithstanding, what about the computer models? Strange that we are being asked to place great reliance on models that nobody has validated, and remain hidden in many cases from the public at large. If the only people who are considered qualified to comment on climate change are climate scientists, why aren’t computer scientists the appropriate individuals to validate their computer models? It would seem to me that programmers, database specialists, mathematicians, and garden variety stats monkeys would be the natural choice for commentary here, but strangely I don’t see any of them in the game.

    You suggest that ‘the broad strokes are there’, and feel that is sufficient to commit Western Civilization (for lets be honest, the Chinese and the Indians aren’t going to play our reindeer games, which is another problem with all of this) to massive economic retrenchment (or do you think powerplants are going to run on unicorn farts and fairy dust?) for decades to come, as well as creating an unelected bureaucracy that will have control over what how much and what sorts of energy production and usage may occur for the foreseeable future? For that sort of surrender of freedom, I want more than broad strokes and models that don’t even predict the past, and I certainly want to see the original data and a set of descriptions of how it was massaged and why. If you are convinced that what has been provided so far is sufficient, you obviously have a lot to learn about many things other than simply how science is done….

  34. Daveon Says:

    January 14th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
    Have you looked at the computer codes? They’re worthless.

    Gosh. Well glad you’ve settled that then.

    Sheesh.

    Some of us actually work with computer codes for a living, Dave. We know shit when we see it. Those codes were absolute garbage but we’re supposed to assume they magically produce good results? Magic is in the domain of religion, Dave. It sure as hell isn’t science.

  35. “CRU mafia and their enablers”

    It’s phrases like that that make you sound like a zealot rather than a concerned citizen.

    No, that article wasn’t the best example I could come up with, it was one I happened to run across while I was reading these comments. I felt it illustrated to some degree the fact that the debate keeps going, the sorts of accusations made on this site serving as little more than fodder for TV and radio personalities to get worked up about. While the real world keeps working on the problem.

  36. Religious faith is a mysterious and often wonderful thing. Here we show evidence of corruption in the scientific process, shoddy computer code, and manipulated data but Ethan is still convinced that under that pile of crap there must be a pony. Ethan, the very evidence that AGW exists has been fundamentally and fatally undermined. Lacking that evidence, any attempts to “keep working the problem” are faith based, not based on science.

  37. No, your claims that the scientific process has been corrupted, shoddy computer code was used, and data manipulated, are hugely overblown and are, I suspect, a product of your ideology rather than your genuine concern and understanding of the situation. Notice it’s a few people on blogs WIGGING THE EFF OUT about this, not world leaders and not real scientists.

  38. Are you qualified to comment on the quality of the computer code? A lot of people are and they’re almost unanimously saying it is garbage. Even if the input data were pristine (and it isn’t), anything produced by that crappy code has to be suspect. That’s the biggest smoking gun in that November data release.

    The emails showed deliberate attempts to manipulate the peer review process to exclude anyone who disagreed with AGW. How is that anything but a corruption and perversion of the scientiic process of rigorous scrutiny?

    “Climate Science” as it stands today has all of the credibility of “Women’s Studies.” It’ll take a long and concerted effort by people of goodwill to make it a real science. As for the world leaders, they’re even less qualified to discuss the matter than you are. We might as well listen to Danny Glover who is claiming that the earthquake in Haiti is retribution (from whom, Gia?) for not accomplishing anything in Copenhagen last month.

  39. Their model isn’t the only model out there! There are lots, some more valid than others. And “soft” studies are not a valid point of comparison here. Climate science involves the collection of data, formulation of theories, and testing of those theories, both through computer modeling and real-world observation. You cannot point to one team at one university and use them to discredit an entire field. That’d be like pointing to Piltdown Man to discredit the theory of Evolution.

  41. Ask them for it, most scientific data is available for review by any qualified scientist who wants it. They don’t give it out to laymen, though. You obviously have internet access: Get to it!

  42. Ask them for it, most scientific data is available for review by any qualified scientist who wants it. They don’t give it out to laymen, though.

    Ask for it, and they send a few emails to each other to make sure the “bad data” (data that is inconsistent with their beliefs) doesn’t gets out. If necessary, they delete the data. And qualified scientist is defined as “believers”. Laymen can be anybody from an astro physicist to zoologist. However, the most important thing is some of “them” are required to provide the data to laymen upon request, because those laymen help pay the taxes used to collect and manipulate the data. So, none of your comments seem to agree with what “they” really do or legally required to do.

  43. “Qualified scientist” is defined as “someone who’s spent their professional career studying the immensely complex systems that make up Earth’s climate.” An astrophysicist or a zoologist would not fit that description, no.

Comments are closed.