going to be gone all day. just wanted to say Happy Thangsgiving jane & all The Firepups.

Yeah, I thought it was funny when this email story first broke about how mocking the deniers seemed to equate to “global warming doesn’t exist.”

Jane,

It was great to see you on C-span this AM. You are getting more accomplished everytime you appear. Your calm demeanor in the face of wingnut challengers was mighty effective, especially the caller who dared call you a liar over Obama’s anti-Iraq position!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all the firepups.

Unfortunately, the people in the broad population who personally subscribe to the idea of global climate change as a “hoax”, or a liberal conspiracy to create socialism and government control, in general cannot be convinced by reason that they are wrong. The weight of the world’s climate science results across universities and institutes, governmental agencies and international efforts, for decades, cannot convince these people.

The problem with these emails is that they can be used to further inflame the already-convinced. The figures who actually wrote these emails are a tiny handful of the overall scientific effort. However, the PR damage is terrible as a result of these emails. These figures who wrote these emails should never be allowed to publish or work in science again for the damage they have done.

I wonder if there will be any consequences for the people who broke in and stole the e-mails, or the people who published them. It should be like selling stolen goods– just because you didn’t steal them doesn’t mean there are no consequences for selling them.

I’d love to see the Exxon emails on climate change.

Did you notice how her smile seemed to get bigger the more vehemently they attacked her?

I liked the way she just brushed off the birther comment.

By the time Jane goes on TV, we have argued all the talking points thoroughly in the blog which makes her ready to return fire without getting angry.

One cool customer is our Jane.*g*

Happy Thanksgiving Jane and Firedogs -

I linked to Jane’s appearance in my diary. Just don’t forget the homework assignment – or no pumkin pie for you! (and we’re talking Steen’s, bourbon, and a ginger snap crust):D

Did someone say bourbon? And pumpkin pie? Much to be thankful for. Have a great day. Namaste

Why would climate scientists want to make up global warming ?
Have those deniers ever tried to address motive?

Hundreds of scientists from all over the world involved in a massive hoax ,yeah right !

Good point, billy. That’s what I always tell global warming deniers: follow the money. There’s a good reason why the oil and coal companies want to deny it.

Happy T-Day, Jane and Firepups.

Yup, it’s obvious the vast majority of scientists around the world are involved in a massive conspiracy and cover up. You know, just like when the government covered up the fact that Elvis didn’t really die, but was swooped up into an alien spacecraft to be “probed” for years, only to be dropped back on earth to live out the rest of his days working as “Assistant Night Manager at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Scabby Elbow, Arkansas…

What will they think of next, throwing $Trillions at the financial services industry? Oh yeah. That’s already been accomplished. I rest my case.

These are the same folks who think the State of Hawaii, the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, and Obama’s family conspired over 47 years ago to hide that Obama was born in Kenya so that he could become president in ‘08.

Rational thinking is not a hallmark

Jill Richardson has a fresh cross-post up: “Food Sunday: Thanksgiving Dinner – More American Than You Think”

Well, not all skeptics are wing nuts or deniers.

http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

There are some really interesting links in that blog.

I for one, have trouble with the “Get on the bandwagon and halt or reverse global warming”. What I don’t see discussed in blogs like this is the nature of the changes vis a vis Chaos theory. In the above blog, it is addressed rather thoroughly.

I see that the vast majority don’t have a clue and that makes for some pretty difficult moves to address the issue.No doubt that we need to change many, many things on our lifestyles, starting with entitlement. But to think that we can simply pull a plug and maybe plug it in backwards will fix it.

It won’t.

I also would highly recommend a book by Ilya Prigogine: The End of Certainty”. He is considered one of the fathers of Chaos Theory and has much to say about the operations of non-linear systems, directly applicable (in my view anyway) to this problem.

So, while it is necessary to debunk the nonsense arising out of the use of half truths by industry, it is also necessary to recognize we don’t have the answers and that we can actually cause even worse things by our reactions.

So you’re saying we could make it worse by limiting greenhouse gas emissions? That’s a new one.

See? It’s the simplistic responses here that cause me as much grief as the wingnuts!

Did I say ANYTHING about limiting greenhouse gasses?

It’s a matter of balance. Google Global dimming.

Happy Thanks to all. I didn’t know we were firepups, but it makes sense.

jane, you were splendid on CSPAN.

I thing to bear in mind while discussing these e-mails is that e-mails are usually plain files that can be easily faked. One should always be skeptical of a claim about what’s in these e-mails unless the contents are validated by the person(s) who wrote them.

That’s not a consideration here, of course. Dr. Mann has clearly indicated that this is e-mail that he wrote.

As to the quote in question, I think this is a marvelous example of how people will fill in the blanks in evidence to make it suit them. The antecedent of “this” isn’t part of the quote. Anyone with a lick of sense would question what was meant by “this”. Climate change deniers are by no means the only ones who indulge in this sort of thing, but that’s clearly what’s going on here.

I suspect intellectual laziness as well. Jump on anything to justify your position.

And that applies across the board.

Intellectual inquiry takes time, effort and openness to change. Not many willing to do that.

You said: it is also necessary to recognize we don’t have the answers and that we can actually cause even worse things by our reactions.

I know you didn’t say anything about greenhouse gases, but limiting greenhouse gases is overwhelmingly the main thrust of our attempts to turn back global warming, so I was simply asking how that could make things worse. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time even responding to you.

Forget it Starbuck… they can only think what Jane tells them to think and since she’s a left wingnut therefore they accept, without debate, what Al and the others peddle about GW. If you don’t agree totally with them then in their book you are clearly insane.

Oh yes, we just blindly follow everything Jane says, regardless of topic. The scientists don’t know what they are talking about with Global Warning and it’s only the people who listen to Rush who engage in “critical thinking” the rest of us are “intellectually lazy”.

Got it.

Certainly not,dakine01. I realize the sarcasm in your response, but frankly some do follow blindly.

Did you bother to check my references? Like global dimming?

The Milgram Studies aftewr WW2 demonstrated that ‘conservatives’ will surrender their ‘morality’ to a higher ‘daddy’ authority-figure for the ‘perceived’ commongood as demonstrated by the ‘normal’ people who did Hitler’s dirtywork.
Also, Irving Crystal (Faux News’ Bill Crystal’s dad) and his cronies, in the fiftys, tried to launch their ‘neo-liberal-movement-politics’ and realized they needed ‘locksteppers’ and became the ‘neo-conservative-movement’. That’s why worldwide its known as ‘neo-liberalism’ except in this country they are ‘neo-cons’.
To try to chacterize Liberals as ‘locksteppers’ or ‘koolaid drinkers’ is a demonstration of ignorance of the source of those terms.

That may be but it’s true for any topic on any blog. My experiences here have been most folks have read and followed these issues independently and to say we all

I suspect intellectual laziness as well. Jump on anything to justify your position.

And that applies across the board.

is rather insulting to say the least. Especially since you don’t know what or how much many of us have researched a topic on our own.

Hell no I didn’t follow your little links. I’m still waiting for an answer to my question: how could we make things worse by taking steps to limit global warming? This is the third time I’ve asked.

Follow the links. I am not going to write it all out.

I think it is time to take the environmental movement back by focusing on real pollutants. I’ve been warning the Rocky Mountain Institute for years about this. I am now afraid that the resource (not just energy) efficiency revolution that they have done such great work on will be sacrificed at the alter of AWG. People will throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Given the CRU event and the damage it has done please consider the following.

1) Just plainly state that there should be an investigation into data manipulation and that all scientists should be forced to release all data and source code like REAL SCIENTISTS DO. Stop defending criminals by talking about peer review when they were reviewing each other’s papers. You didn’t rig data, collude to prevent others from being published, sabotage other scientists careers. You have to distance yourself immediately from the MBH et al ilk!

2) No longer talk about CO2. It’s dead, proven to be rigged data and continuing to talk about it will only discredit the whole environmental movement.

3) Talk about mercury pollution. 40 tons a year from coal, 35 tons a year from garbage incineration and that is just from North America (and we are not that bad compared to Asia and Africa, scary but true!). Talk about the watershed destruction in coal mining.

4) Offer up a straight forward alternative. Shale gas for the short term renewables for short, medium and long term. The best thing for the environment in the last 50 years is the shale gas technology! Not pretty or renewable but it gives us 50 to 60 years if we decommission all coal & nuke plants and double that if we just phase them out.

So bring the shale gas online as fast as possible and convert/shutdown the coal plants first. With a lot less than 50 years of research and development renewables will be working and cost competitive.

Point out that we are also running out of uranium so nuclear fission plants may not have fuel in the future.

If we allow stupid LIES and pseudo science like that practiced by the AWG crowd (MBH et al) to be used to tax us then yes we will all be a lot poorer. If we just push the resource efficiency like rmi.org then we will save money.

If we actually force scientists like Mann, Bradley, Hughes, Jones and the rest of the AWG crowd to make all the data and code publicly available LIKE REAL SCIENTISTS do then we will progress.

From: A real environmentalist!
Cheers

Yeah I know, let’s buy a really fucking big umbrella. That will keep us cool.

The notion we could use other gases to mitigate global warming is just another excuse for not doing what we are well aware we need to do.

tmac13, what “real scientists” do is not dismiss decades of careful observation on the basis of a dodgy email. The data is not hidden, although it’s sometimes difficult to interpret, and that allows liars, charlatans, fools and crackpots the space to pour bullshit into the discourse. That you suggest that “CO2 is dead and the data rigged” strongly suggests you are one of those four things, if not two, but decorum prevents me from saying which.

Ooops! Sorry, dakine! I wasn’t referencing anyone in particular, here or elsewhere. I was simply making the observation, based on my experiences on and off the internet blogs, that one side or the other does not hold exclusive rights to easy conclusions, sometimes leading to fanaticism, concerning this or any other topics. I highly respect your contributions here, and on the whole FDL.

FYI, I was strongly in the camp as presented by Al Gore and others. Then I read an essay by an Australian scientist that took apart, point by point, the premises under which many of the beliefs were formulated. I couldn’t subscribe to it wholesale, but in the back of my mind, the whole notion of non-linearity began to surface. So I re-examined the whole thing, so far as I could do in my limited time and expertize.

In the 90’s, I made a comprehensive study of Chaos theory. I have the Mandelbrot book on fractals, and my references inculde Penrose, Prigogine and others. I was an advisor to an author doing her own work on chaos theory.

I realize the difference pointed out by writers between weather which is accepted as non-linear, and climate which is considered linear, by definition. Yet others still point out that climate is a collection of weather data over time, and since weather is non-linear, well, shouldn’t climate be considered in a non-linear sense as well?

So, the basis of my skepticism.

Anyway, maybe this might answer ReisFischer as well.

It’s a really tough place to be. Action is called for. Actions well intentioned have turned out to be wrong. Can we fix it? Can we fix it just once?

WRT Starbuck, there is a saying: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right now, I’m suspecting that you have a very cherished hammer called “chaos theory,” but I’m also suspecting that you don’t actually understand it very well.

One point in particular brought this home to me: “I realize the difference pointed out by writers between weather which is accepted as non-linear, and climate which is considered linear, by definition. Yet others still point out that climate is a collection of weather data over time, and since weather is non-linear, well, shouldn’t climate be considered in a non-linear sense as well?”

The problem with this is that chaotic behavior can arise from linear systems, and (here’s the important bit) linear behavior can emerge from chaotic systems. Don’t believe me? Look up “turbulence” (the chaotic behavior of fluids when viewed at a small scale) and “laminar flow” (the linear, predictable behavior of fluids when viewed at a larger scale). The idea that a touch of non-linearity can somehow “infect” and call into question statistically predictable systems is a fundamental misunderstanding of chaos theory.

WRT the argument about marching lockstep, of course. Of COURSE, climate change accepters do it, just like climate change deniers do it. It is ALWAYS much easier to simply do as you’re told (whether by Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh, it makes no difference) than it is to, well, in this case, to be a climatologist (which, I’d imagine takes many years of study). But, and here’s the interesting thing, whether people accept an assertion after years of study or whether they accept it because a media personality tells them to *does not in any way* change the truth value of that assertion. I may accept that the sky is blue simply because “everyone says” the sky is blue, but that fact doesn’t change whether or not the sky really IS blue.

Humans are, by nature, lazy creatures. Intellectual rigor does not come naturally to any of us — even scientists. We have to be trained, and work at, rational thought. And even then, elements of irrationality creep in; the climate change denier scientist doesn’t question some of his assumptions because, well, it would be inconvenient to actually evaluate those claims from the ground up — and, unfortunately, if you throw out the “assumed to be true” (a priori) assertions, the *entire conclusion* about climate change, er, changes. Similarly, a climate change accepting scientist may dismiss out of hand contradictory data because it would call climate change into question or (much more likely) jeopardize the publication of a juicy new research paper that will guarantee research funding for the next five years (hey, scientists are human too). This does not invalidate climate science, it simply means that *on the individual scale*, your results may vary.

This is why science proceeds largely by consensus. This is why we have peer review. This is why the definition of scientific “fact” and “law” and “theory” are very different from the common definition of those terms. What matters is not what individual scientists think. What matters is the *consensus* of scientific thought, because this tends to represent the end result after years of attempt at disproof (see eg Popper on “falsifiability” and what it means for something to be “scientific”). Not always, scientific consensus can be — and regularly is — wrong. But it is much more reliable, on the whole, than what individual scientists (and especially members of the lay public, with no real training in the scientific method and no attempt to properly test their own conclusions) believe.

TLDR: it’s the scientific consensus, stupid.

And the consensus on climate change is that it’s real. We don’t know for sure how fast (but most of the new data suggests it’s happening far *faster* than we thought, rather than the other way around). We don’t know entirely the outcomes (although projections range from the merely catastrophic to extinction-level events). But one thing we’re pretty sure about is that it is happening, it is worldwide, and it is accelerating.

I do think Starbuck’s caution about the law of unintended consequences is valid; while we probably need to do something, we need to be careful about attempts at large-scale geoengineering; who knows what the result will be? Perhaps it would be better to simply, as dakine and others suggest, attempt to reduce our impact.

ouroborous, thanks for your considered post.

The hammer-nail example is reasonably true, although I sometimes use a hammer to pull the nail!

I am quite aware of the examples you site concerning fluid dynamics. The switch from linear stable to non-linear chaotic has examples in other systems as well. I experienced that in a complex feedback loop as part of a large scale control system that behaved very strangely under conditions likely to be encountered during operations. No one had a sense of the behavior and that was in the mid 60’s when Chaos theory and the notion of “Stochastic behavior occurring in a deterministic system” had not been formulated, the Edward Loewnz paper of 1960 or so not withstanding.

I certainly understand the nature and necessity of peer review, and how funding can color the process, as you so well point out.

I did not mean that nothing should be done. We absolutely need to reduce our impact. It has been estimated that if the entire population of this planet lived as we do, it would require 5 additional planets of the resources we possess to fuel it! And in the final analysis, doing the necessary reductions may well have unintended consequences which can only be dealt with as they arise, assuming we could deal with it.

My whole point here is that sincere, capable people have rightly said “hold on here!” in the rush to judgment, and I for one will look and listen. Hopefully, we can make the adjustments with greater clarity.

Starbuck, with all due respect, the problem with “hold on here” is we’ve been in “hold on here” mode for over forty years now, ever since the publication of Silent Spring.

The earth will survive just fine if Global Warming alarms come true. But humans won’t.

We don’t have a whole lot of “hold on here” time left in order to stop this from coming to pass.

Do you really want to bet the future of your descendants on the side of the deniers?

Nobody reads paragraph 5. I quote:

“I did not mean that nothing should be done. We absolutely need to reduce our impact. It has been estimated that if the entire population of this planet lived as we do, it would require 5 additional planets of the resources we possess to fuel it! And in the final analysis, doing the necessary reductions may well have unintended consequences which can only be dealt with as they arise, assuming we could deal with it.”

What we have the classic “Horns of a Dilemma”. Some pick the left horn, some the right. I choose to go between.

Since ouroborous put it so succinctly at the end of his post, I’ll leave it there.

With all due respect, following the middle way seems like it will take us to the same place as jumping on the right horn and not much slower.

Are there going to be unintended side consequences? Most likely and we will have to address those consequences as they arise.

But for myself, given a choice of doing nothing and the near certainty of disaster versus making attempts to alleviate the problems with possible consequences? I think I choose the attempts to alleviate the problem and dealing with any unknown consequences from that as they arise.

Again, I did not say “do nothing”. I am against “do anything”.

Shudda, cudda, wudda, possess no value. We are here and now, and I counsel move to make the changes but do so with your eyes wide open and not wide shut. But then, there are degrees between wide open and wide shut and I suspect that where individuals are on that continuum varies greatly!

And again I say with all due respect but when you say “take the middle way” or “hold on here” you are in fact in the naysayer/move slow/global warming is a hoax universe.

From all indications, we don’t have the time to move slow or take the middle way

Yes we have to much population. Yes we burn too many of the earth’s resources here in the US. Do you think it will improve at ll by moving slowly on the issue?

It will be like any other issue that needed quick action and was met by delays and “slow moving.” The longer the issue is put off with no response or limited response, the more difficult it becomes to clean it up. Half measures just won’t help.

dakine, here is another “Between the Horns” POV:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/27/the-wsjs-kim-strassel-cru-emails-prove-global-warming-is-fake/
Post 72 by Rayne

His link to the Maunder Minimum is also interesting:

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