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Forums - General Discussion - Climate Change, No peer reviewed evidence to prove it isn't happening

megaman79 on 17 August 2009

Climate expert slams Fielding

(note- this is in response to Steve Fielding, the Australian senator who was quoted by the WSJ, and in a vgchartz thread, a few weeks ago)
by Bernard Keane

ANU climate change expert Professor Will Steffen has responded to Senator Steve Fielding’s climate sceptic claims with an open letter slamming the position advanced by Fielding in June after returning from a greenhouse denialist conference in the United States.

Fielding sought and obtained a meeting between Climate Minister Penny Wong, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett and Steffen to argue that the evidence for climate change was in dispute. Fielding attended the meeting with prominent climate sceptics such as Bob Carter and Stewart Franks, and claimed that evidence showed there was no global warming and carbon was not responsible for climate change.

Fielding subsequently asked that Steffen attend a presentation to senators with Carter, which Steffen has declined.

In a savage assault on the credibility of Carter and his fellow sceptics, Steffen tells Fielding:

… you state in your letter that ‘it is important that all Senators are given the opportunity to hear both sides of the debate…’ In terms of the relationship between carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) and global warming, there is no debate in the climate change research community. That the Earth’s surface is warming is unequivocal, and there is also strong agreement amongst the vast majority of climate change scientists that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases… are the primary cause… The counter argument put forward by Professor Carter and his colleagues do not constitute the “other side of a scientific debate.” In fact, based on the written documentation that I have seen… these counter arguments do not constitute credible science. These documents demonstrate a serious misunderstanding of climate science and processes for assessing that science; they also contain violations of the fundamental principles of sound statistical analysis. In addition, there are numerous example of flawed logic, misleading and inaccurate statements, and confuse and inconsistent analyses. In my professional opinion and experience, science students at the ANU would be expected to much better than this.

Steffen points out that there is no peer-reviewed material that refutes the main findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and invites Fielding to visit ANU to discuss climate change.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/12/climate-expert-slams-fielding/


 



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

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HappySqurriel on 17 August 2009

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/

The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.

The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection - except to hand-picked academics - for several years. Instead, it releases a processed version, in gridded form. NASA maintains its own (GISSTEMP), but the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC. So any errors in CRU cascade around the world, and become part of "the science".

Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

In 2007, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, CRU initially said it didn't have to fulfil the requests because "Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites".

Now it's citing confidentiality agreements with Denmark, Spain, Bahrain and our own Mystic Met Office. Others may exist, CRU says in a statement, but it might have lost them because it moved offices. Or they were made verbally, and nobody at CRU wrote them down.

As for the raw station data,

"We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."

Canadian statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre, who has been asking for the data set for years, says he isn't impressed by the excuses. McIntyre obtained raw data when it was accidentally left on an FTP server last month. Since then, CRU has battened down the hatches, and purged its FTP directories lest any more raw data escapes and falls into the wrong hands.

McIntyre says he doesn't expect any significant surprises after analysing the raw data, but believes that reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific principle, and so raw data and methods should be disclosed.

 

Or to put it another way, the data-set that is used to argue that there is global warming hasn't been peer-reviewed and the original data-set was destroyed rather than to let their critics view it and audit their methodology ... That sounds scientific.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2] One of the first to clearly outline the specifics of a scientific method was John Stuart Mill.[3][4]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.



megaman79 on 17 August 2009

One example? Yea, good luck with that argument. Just because there is a FOI issue does not mean it is actually incorrect. Its very similar to the idea that vgchartz or NPD should make public all of their information. If there is only a small sample, or smaller than certain people would find acceptable, its an all in brawl on the issue.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

HappySqurriel on 17 August 2009
megaman79 said:
One example? Yea, good luck with that argument. Just because there is a FOI issue does not mean it is actually incorrect. Its very similar to the idea that vgchartz or NPD should make public all of their information. If there is only a small sample, or smaller than certain people would find acceptable, its an all in brawl on the issue.

 

Its not "one example" ...

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Flight (GISS) shared dataset has been heavily discredited by the work of surfacestations.org by demonstrating that the error in the vast majority of surface stations caused by (somewhat) recent urbanization is greater than the warming trend that their dataset displays.

To put that into perspective, the two largest and most commonly cited datasets are not scientifically valid; and there is almost no peer-reviewed paper on "Climate Change" that doesn't cite one of these two datasets.

 

Now, the only worldwide dataset that is still valid is the satellite temperature record which hasn't shown a pronounced increase in temperature over the past decade.

Edit: To put it another way, at this point in time to continue to support climate change is religion rather than science, because the underlying data have been discredited.



megaman79 on 17 August 2009

Thats great. One country.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

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TheRealMafoo on 17 August 2009

LOL

You said it yourself HS, it's a religion, and religions are based of beliefs, not facts. You can talk to MegaMan until your blue in the face, and you him, you will always be wrong. No matter how much sense you make.



NKAJ on 17 August 2009
TheRealMafoo said:
LOL

You said it yourself HS, it's a religion, and religions are based of beliefs, not facts. You can talk to MegaMan until your blue in the face, and you him, you will always be wrong. No matter how much sense you make.

Climate cghange is not a religon



"They will know heghan belongs to the helghast"

"England expects that everyman will do his duty"

"we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender"

 

Sardauk on 17 August 2009
NKAJ said:
TheRealMafoo said:
LOL

You said it yourself HS, it's a religion, and religions are based of beliefs, not facts. You can talk to MegaMan until your blue in the face, and you him, you will always be wrong. No matter how much sense you make.

Climate cghange is not a religon

No but it affects US-christian's faith apparently...



 

Evan Wells (Uncharted 2): I think the differences that you see between any two games has much more to do with the developer than whether it’s on the Xbox or PS3.

megaman79 on 17 August 2009

Off topic subjects, easy bait. How about somebody shows me actual peer reviewed global statistics or evidence to refute these claims.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

HappySqurriel on 17 August 2009
megaman79 said:
Off topic subjects, easy bait. How about somebody shows me actual peer reviewed global statistics or evidence to refute these claims.

An interesting thing about science is that it is not the responsibility of people to show evidence that something is wrong; it is the responsibility of the scientist to provide auditable evidence that their claims are correct. The reason for this is simple, it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something and therefore the evidence that supports its existence must be irrefutable.

The problem I demonstrated that you're unwilling to realize is that there is no valid auditable data that demonstrates a warming trend on the Earth that is outside of historic norms; which means that there is no scientific evidence for global warming at this point in time. The contiuned support of global warming as a threat is based entirely on belief and not on evidence which makes it a religion rather than a science.