Hacker Gets the Goods on Global Warming... or something

[Thurnez Isa]

also
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html

ABSTRACT:
Direct observations of sunspot numbers are available for the past four centuries, but longer time series are required, for example, for the identification of a possible solar influence on climate and for testing models of the solar dynamo. Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.

I don't have a subscription to Nature... but I have subscriptions and access to online catalogues of Geology, Lithosphere, Geological Society of America and Geosphere if anyone wants me to look something up Im willing to do a search...

[Thurnez Isa]

To be honest I usually skip over all the stuff on climate, cause I'm not interested in it, unless it has to do with the Mesozoic era, lol.
But if it's an interest to people here I could read and post the abstracts of any related article I come across (my subs come in once a month).....
also (cough cough) I'd be posting them from the PDF's (they come in electronically) if you guys ketch my drift

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

To be honest I usually skip over all the stuff on climate, cause I'm not interested in it, unless it has to do with the Mesozoic era, lol.
But if it's an interest to people here I could read and post the abstracts of any related article I come across (my subs come in once a month).....
also (cough cough) I'd be posting them from the PDF's (they come in electronically) if you guys ketch my drift

Sounds awesome... I would really like to read what research is being done, rather than the media's buzzword/soundbite versions

[Hangshai]

new article I found.  Not really hacked emails, but, there is so much of this shit out there now, I just thought this was a different angle I hadn't heard yet..  Really though who fucking cares.  Earth has been frozen over a bunch of times and its probably going to happen again. so fucking what, good riddance. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234515/Copenhagen-summit-The-world-COOLING-warming-says-scientist-Peter-Taylor.html

[Requia ☣]

The cooling prediction is based on the Milankovitch Cycle, which has to do with the earth's orbit and axial tile.  According to that we should have been in a period of cooling for some time now.  There is some argument that it will overcome global warming and end the interglacial period hundreds of years from now, but its failed to be dominant so far.

It's actually important to note, since it means the warming trend of the last couple hundred years has been occurring *despite* the fact that we should be cooling according to astronomical effects.

[Requia ☣]

The sunspot stuff is interesting.  Especially since it specifies that sunspots have only been peaked for the last 70 years, which means it can't be used to explain a warming trend for the last 250 years.

[Thurnez Isa]

Saudi Arabia is using climategate to advance its own position at Copenhagen:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30291.html

Saudi Arabia called for an independent investigation into "climategate" Monday, warning that the scandal over stolen e-mails threatened to undermine the global-warming negotiations beginning here.

"We believe this scandal — or what has been referred to as the 'climategate' scandal — we think this is definitely going to affect the nature of what could be trusted in our deliberations," the Saudi Arabian negotiator said.

Now why would the world's biggest oil producer want to do that?

Edit: it has been alleged that Russia was behind the original hack

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/was-russian-secret-service-behind-leak-of-climatechange-emails-1835502.

The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.

The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them "an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect". The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.

"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services," Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. "It's a carefully made selection of emails and documents that's not random. This is 13 years of data, and it's not a job of amateurs."

Now why would one of the world's biggest oil producers want to do that?

It seems Peter Sinclair agrees with you and makes some predictions on what is coming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AyjLTaP0i0&feature=sub

Take into account thought that Sinclair is in the Al Gore camp, and a bit of an asshole. But he does do his research and is generally pretty reliable.

[LMNO]

It seems to me that the whole concept of global warming is made up of hundreds of variables, each pushing the sum of the data in a certain way.

In a way, you can think about it like a sound wave.  One set of data looks like this:



But when added to another set of data, it looks like this:


(the yellow line is the sum of the red and the blue lines)

And when you add a bunch of them together, it starts looking like this:


(note the red line doesn't look much like either the green or the blue lines)

And when you get hundreds of data sets, you get this:



Notice that while it looks like a jagged mess, there are two rough peaks, one being slightly higher than the other.



What seems to be happening is that the email articles in question concern one data set out of hundreds; the equivalent of discussing the data that caused the 23rd point from the left in the last graph above.  Even if the values that caused that point are not 100% precise, you are still left with the overall shape of the sound wave, i.e. two rough peaks.

That is to say, the concept of global warming is sound, and the vast majority of scientists agree that it is partially man-made.  However, since the amount of variables are so large, there is very little possibility of saying, "Humans cause 74.8976% of global warming."

[Hangshai]

found a good video on global warming.  I wanted to share it with you since we were discussing it earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU&NR=1

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

It seems to me that the whole concept of global warming is made up of hundreds of variables, each pushing the sum of the data in a certain way.

In a way, you can think about it like a sound wave.  One set of data looks like this:



But when added to another set of data, it looks like this:


(the yellow line is the sum of the red and the blue lines)

And when you add a bunch of them together, it starts looking like this:


(note the red line doesn't look much like either the green or the blue lines)

And when you get hundreds of data sets, you get this:



Notice that while it looks like a jagged mess, there are two rough peaks, one being slightly higher than the other.



What seems to be happening is that the email articles in question concern one data set out of hundreds; the equivalent of discussing the data that caused the 23rd point from the left in the last graph above.  Even if the values that caused that point are not 100% precise, you are still left with the overall shape of the sound wave, i.e. two rough peaks.

That is to say, the concept of global warming is sound, and the vast majority of scientists agree that it is partially man-made.  However, since the amount of variables are so large, there is very little possibility of saying, "Humans cause 74.8976% of global warming."

The other bit is that if you don't know what half the variables are and you don't know how much weight to give to the ones that you *can* measure, you can't reliably predict much.

Of course, normal consumers of news media don't want to think about this stuff. Instead, we get something dumbed down: carbon dioxide causes global warming, methane causes global warming, warm baths cause global warming, global warming is natural. Usually phrased as an either-or, not an and-also, causing people to fiddle with some of the variables that are known and ignore the rest. This is the kind of logic that makes people think Priuses are good for the environment (actually, they are worse than some modern non-hybrid cars one you take into account battery disposal and such).

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I am still stunned that any scientific community is OK with not releasing the raw data with all scientific studies/papers etc. If the reason we can 'trust' science over religion is because we can repeat experiments etc... then without the raw data and public disclosure of details, what are we trusting? At the very least, even if the data isn't incorrect, the behaviors of the humans involved seems rather non-sciency to me...

Secret Raw Data that you have to sign contracts to see or use (and you get blackballed if you disagree)... I wonder if it involves Theatens and Volcanos?

[LMNO]

Rat, while I admire your idealism, just look at what the wingnuts did with the emails: took one sentence out of context, and used it as "solid evidence" that ALL scientists are lying about climate change.


You give a campaign manager a bunch of conflicting data and an agenda, and they'll have a dozen attack ads on the TV by Tuesday.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Rat, while I admire your idealism, just look at what the wingnuts did with the emails: took one sentence out of context, and used it as "solid evidence" that ALL scientists are lying about climate change.


You give a campaign manager a bunch of conflicting data and an agenda, and they'll have a dozen attack ads on the TV by Tuesday.

Ok... but thats kinda the same thing the Scientologists say "Well, they take Xenu out of context..."

Is this science in pursuit of truth or science in pursuit of convincing everyone else that they're right?

For fucks sake, since people started using science to better understand the world, good scientists have buggered up data and come to wrong conclusions... its through open peer review that buggered up data can be fixed. If there isn't open peer review and if the people that disagree are blackballed... that doesn't sound like science to me...

And its not just this... how much other scientific work is being done today and locked behind contracts and Intellectual Property? Why the hell should we 'trust' any of it to be any more reliable than "Bob's Guide to the Afterlife" (He has video of ghosts and absolute evidence of Gozer returning soon. That's all Intellectual Property though and you aren't allowed to see it.)

If thats how 'science' is gonna be done, fine... but in that case, we just need to label it as another belief system, where the lay people believe the clergy... cause only the clergy can read the language...

[LMNO]

I hate to get elitist here, but if people don't understand what the data says, what's the point in showing them?

I am all for transparancy and freedom of information, but if all we're going to get from it is political "he said, she said" grandstanding, I think that detracts from science in the long run.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I hate to get elitist here, but if people don't understand what the data says, what's the point in showing them?

I am all for transparancy and freedom of information, but if all we're going to get from it is political "he said, she said" grandstanding, I think that detracts from science in the long run.

But thats exactly what the Church said about the hoi polloi reading the bible. "They're not able to understand on their own, they'll have to trust us."

If one of the main values of science is "anyone can repeat the experiment" so that we can rule out confirmation bias or error... what does science become if that's no longer true? How does this not turn science into a belief system?

"You're not capable of understanding this data on your own, I'll interpret it for you and tell you what it means..."

Maybe the interpretation is true... but for most people it would still be belief... accepting what someone else tells you with no way to check for yourself.

(Again, not being a AGW denier... trying to focus on the larger question here)