ClimateGate: East Anglia University Statement...

Here's the updated statement from East Anglia University (home of the CRU).  Most of it is defensive, of course.  There are several explicit denials about the significance of anything revealed in the ClimateGate trove. 

But most interesting to me are the two graphs at the bottom of the page.  The top graph is the famous “hockey stick” graph, showing precipitous rises in measured and modeled temperatures.  This is the graph that was published in the IPCC reports, and has been used very widely by AGW promoters.  The bottom graph is the same data, but “uncorrected”.  In other words, the raw data with no fudge factors and no tricks. 

Those two graphs tell one of the essential revelations of ClimateGate, and here, for the very first time, the CRU is 'fessing up. 

I suspect we'll be seeing more like this.

ClimateGate: The Role of Bloggers and the Web...

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today...

A Day That Shall Live in Infamy...

Sixty-eight years ago today, Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.  Until 9/11, this event was unrivaled as the most horrible unprovoked attack the U.S. had ever suffered.  A few Pearl Harbor survivors are still alive, and some are planning to visit the site today.  Here in California, we have special license plates to honor Pearl Harbor survivors – and I still see them driving around occasionally.

Just once, several years ago, I actually had the chance to meet and talk with one of these Pearl Harbor survivors, as we both climbed out of our cars in a grocery store parking lot.  The fellow I met was 17 years old at the time of the attack, and was a “plane wrangler” at one of the air bases.  His job was to move the fighter planes from hangers to the flight line and vice versa.  He could do little on that day except to hide from the attacking Japanese planes, and to help clean up afterwards.

Today I read that historians believe they have found the missing fifth Japanese mini-sub – and that they have evidence that it actually participated in the attack (unlike the other four).  If this is proven, a little re-writing of history will be required...

While 9/11 looms much larger in my mind these days, the Pearl Harbor attack still holds many lessons for us.  I've read extensively on World War II in general, and the Pacific theatre in particular, and yet still every time I read a new book I run into new information.  The most useful things, I think, are the illustrations about how people actually behave under extreme circumstances.  Our society rests in large part on assumptions about good behavior by people all over the world – and Pearl Harbor teaches us that it ain't necessarily so.  The whole period has been so thoroughly mined by historians that one can quite easily get an understanding about how and why both sides acted the way they did.  This is not yet possible with 9/11.

Anyway, take a few moments today to reflect on the meaning of the Pearl Harbor attack.  If you have the opportunity, by all means do your bit to honor those who served there – both those who died, and those who survived...

ClimateGate: So Much for Ignoring It at Copenhagen...

AGW supporters have been trying very hard to pretend ClimateGate never happened, and that even if it did, it doesn't matter.  The science is settled, dammit!

Oops.

Australian AGW Supporting Scientist - Turned Skeptic...

Now this sort of thing is hitting the mainstream press.  Thank you, ClimateGate!

ClimateGate: Another Scientist Speaks Out...

This time in a letter from Christopher Essex (an applied mathemetician) to Daniel Henniger (a Wall Street Journal columnist).  A snippet that resonated with me:

Science is alive and well in the individual scientists who are not caught up in gaming the system for bigger grants. I call it small science. Many of them are doing very unfashionable things, and are happy to get no recognition for it.

That is where you can find the real scientists. That is where the future will be.

Go read the whole thing.

Copenhagen is All Hot Air?

So sayeth Jonah Goldberg, writing at Real Clear Politics.  I liked this bit:

"Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet's oil reserves -- about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion," writes energy expert Peter Huber in City Journal. "If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they've got."

It's not just the nasty countries. Canada, the Dudley Do-Right of the international community, insists on exploiting its vast and dirty oil reserves in the "tar sands" under Alberta. The intro to an article by British eco-scold George Monbiot declared: "Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling." If Canada, which has long been the UN's Richie Cunningham, won't play ball, does anyone think the Chinese, Indians or Brazilians will?

The “Dudley Do-Right” of the international community.  Heh!

Telling Gordon Brown How the Cow Ate the Cabbage...

These wounded British soldiers are very unhappy with Gordon Brown's leadership, and they're not afraid to let him know.  Well, Gordon, you really wouldn't expect these soldiers to be pushovers, would you?

ClimateGate: More Code Analysis...

Interesting analysis by Robert Greiner, a scientist and programmer, and an AGW agnostic.

Your Sunday Morning Brain Cleanser...

Sarah Palin, Comedienne?

You decide.  I sure laughed, both at her wisecracks and at the slightly modified version of the 12 days of Christmas song...

The Most Influential Tree in the World...

Read all about it here.

Is It Just Me?

Or is the tone of the political cartoons changing?  You decide, after you decide whether to laugh or cry.  Click any thumbnail to enlarge...

Leading Environmental Indicators...

Steven Hayward at Pacific Research is out with the fourteenth Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.  It's a 75 page PDF packed with all sorts of interesting views of our environment, how it's changing, and how it's being reported.

The graph at right is just one randomly chosen example.  This one shows the variations in sea ice coverage in the Antarctic over the past 30 years.  This is the period for which satellite-borne instruments give us reliable coverage data.  If you've been listening to a lot of the AGW hype, what you see on that graph may surprise you...

I recommend taking an evening to peruse this document yourself.  It reminds me a bit of the Skeptical Environmentalist, in a sort of Reader's Digest form...

ClimateGate: A Slightly Different Take...

Amazing Commercial...

An interesting and emotionally-charged story packed into short video.  Kudos to the creators, for a commercial I actually enjoyed watching...

What Will They Think of Next?

Should the city supply tents for amorous couples who would otherwise have sex in public?  This debate could only happen in San Francisco...

ClimateGate: Daily Dump...

Judging from the events, it's looking to me like the ClimateGate scandal has reached and gone over a sort of tipping point: scientists and policy makers now appear to be taking it quite seriously.  It hasn't yet dented the true warmenists religious fervor, but...when that happens, I think it's pretty much time to declare victory and go home.

Some interesting bits from my reading today:

• The UK Meterology Office (their equivalent of our NOAA) is going to re-examine all 160 years of their temperature data.  They are no longer confident of their own data, because of the ClimateGate revelations.  This is quite significant, as the UK Met's data is one of the three primary sources of data used in the IPCC report that is in turn driving much of the policy movement toward AGW mitigation.  What heartens me about this development is that I'm pretty sure the result will be greatly increased transparency on the data collection and analysis, which means some wonderful sunlight on the foundations of the AGW claims.
  
  
• The London Globe and Mail has a nice summary of the current ClimateGate situation, with this bit that I quite liked:
  
  

  Unusually, even sympathetic scientists and some activists have concluded that the credibility of climate science has been seriously harmed.
  
  “We should not underestimate the damage caused by what has happened, either for the science or for the politics of climate change, and potentially it could have some very far-reaching consequences,” said Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at East Anglia whose e-mails were among those included in the pirated files and who has been critical of the secrecy and lack of impartiality in his colleagues' work.
  
  

  The whole piece is nicely even-handed, and not so credulous of the AGW proponents claims as we've seen in the past.  It's very refreshing to see this sort of reporting in the mainstream media – even thought it's only in the British media so far, and not in the U.S...
  
  
  
• Speaking of sunshine...  Here's a great example – a fellow blogging under the pseudonym of AJStrata has done some nice, independent analysis on the raw data revealed in ClimateGate.  Unlike the CRU folks, he's placed his methods and results out in public view for the sun to shine on them.  He's an amateur, but he's looking far more professional than CRU.  I have no idea how correct his analysis is, and that's not the point.  The point is that this is how science ought to work.
  
  
• Finally, there's this quite well-done summary of ClimateGate by Steven Hayward in the Weekly Standard.  The entire piece is balanced and sober; a good example of the kind of journalism I wish we had been seeing for the past few years regarding AGW.  And, alas, while the Weekly Standard is an American webzine, by no means can I call it “mainstream” – they're a struggling little site that truthfully isn't far removed from a blog, except that the often well-known writers (presumably) are paid.  Read the whole thing...but here's the conclusion:
  
  

  The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA's James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. There is no doubt plenty more of this kind of corruption in other hotbeds of climate science, but there are also a lot of unbiased scientists trying to do important and valuable work. Climate alarmists and their media cheerleaders are fond of warning about "tipping points" to disaster, but ironically this episode may represent a tipping point against the alarmists. The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause.
  
  Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future. Yet the hysteria of the global warming campaigners and their monomaniacal advocacy of absurdly expensive curbs on fossil fuel use have led to a political dead end that will become more apparent with the imminent collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process. I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s--as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Today the climate campaigners want to forcibly sterilize the world's energy supply, and until recently they looked to be within an ace of doing so. But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it's closing time for the climate horror show.
  

On Sarah Palin's Birther Remarks...

What Ace said, except that my perspective is not as a Republican, but rather as an observer of how politics actually works....

Men and Women: Viva la Difference!

Contributed by reader Bill G., and offered without comment (considering that my wife reads this blog):

ClimateGate: Rex Murphy Holds Forth...

ClimateGate: a Great Summary...

In the London Times...

Google Introduces Free Faster, Better DNS...

I'm telling you, they're going to take over the world!

ClimateGate: Sarah Palin Weighs In...

On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin says:

Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” Boycotting Copenhagen while this scandal is thoroughly investigated would send a strong message that the United States government will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices. Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place.”

Can't disagree with that, though some of the other things she says I might quibble with...

ClimateGate: Al Gore Opts Out...

Numerous sites are reporting that Al Gore has canceled a scheduled appearance at the Copenhagen climate summit.  The appearance was to promote his new book.  Now why would he choose this moment to cancel what must be the single best event at which to promote his new AGW book?

Maybe he's busy reassessing his positions in the face of the ClimateGate evidence.  Or maybe he's just afraid of the questions the crowd will be asking...

ClimateGate: Steyn Spouts...

Whenever Mark Steyn comes out with a new column, I wait to read it until I have at least 15 minutes or so to cherish it.  It doesn't matter what the topic is; the combination of Steyn's wit and his observational skills are like a drug for me.

So you can probably imagine how I've been anticipating his (inevitable) column on ClimateGate (which he calls “Warmergate”).  And the column doesn't disappoint.  A sample:

Phil Jones and Michael Mann are two of the most influential figures in the whole “climate change” racket. What these documents reveal is the greatest scientific scandal of our times—and a tragedy. It’s not just their graphs but their battle lines that are drawn all wrong. Science is never “settled,” and certainly not on the basis of predictive models. And any scientist who says it is is no longer a scientist. And the dismissal of “skeptics” throughout the Jones/Mann correspondence is most revealing: a real scientist is always a skeptic.

It may well be that Warmergate has come along too late. I won’t pretend to know the motivations of Jones, Mann and their colleagues, but judging from recent eco-advertising their work appears to have driven worshippers at the First Church of the Settled Scientist literally insane. A new commercial shows polar bears dropping from the skies onto city streets and crushing the cars below. To those of us who still quaintly recall 9/11, it evokes grotesquely those poor souls who chose to jump from the Twin Towers and die in one last gulp of air rather than perish in the fireball within. But who cares? Their plight is as nothing next to that of the polar bear. Why are they plummeting to their deaths from the heavens? As the ad explains, “An average European flight produces over 400 kg of greenhouse gases for every passenger. That’s the weight of an adult polar bear.”

Oooookay. It’s A Warmerful Life: every time they call your flight, a poley bear loses its wings.

You won't want to miss Steyn's first draft of a comprehensive statement on the state of AGW evidence.  Read the whole thing here.

Quote of the Day...

U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Allen West has been fined after admitting to allowing and participating in harsh interrogation techniques on an Iraqi policeman he believed had information about a planned ambush on West and his troops.  The Iraqi policeman “cracked” and provided information that allowed West and his troops to evade the ambush.  The would-be ambushers were captured or killed, and there were no more ambuses on West's troops while he was in Iraq.

At the hearing, West testifed that “I know the method I used was not right, but I wanted to take care of my soldiers.”  After that, West was asked if he'd act differently now under similar circumstances, and he said:

“If it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can.”

Now that's the kind of leader I'd want to have, if I were in a combat group.  Come to think of it, that's the kind of leader I'd like to have as an American.

Awesome, Lt. Col. West, just absolutely awesome...

ClimateGate: Daily Dump...

Thanks, Jon.  Now some more:

• Kate says the ClimateGate genie is out of the bottle on Canadian mainstream media.
  
  
• Ann Coulter applies her usual wit (which generally involves knives and other edged instruments of evisceration) to ClimateGate.
  
  
• Ken Green gives us the meaning of Motley CRU.
  
  
• Chris Horner says “Gimme my data, NASA!”
  
  
• Inhofe is trying to getting Congress into the ClimateGate business.
  
  
• Roger Simon takes Barbara Boxer to task.

To a long-time AGW skeptic like me, seeing all this stuff happening is more than slightly mind-boggling.  It's also a huge relief, because it sure looks like the laundry is going to get washed and dried in the sunlight here...

Going Rogue...

Last night I finished reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue.  A few reactions:

• It's certainly no literary masterpiece, and I suspect she'd be quick to agree with that.  I had no problem staying awake while reading it, but I wasn't riveted by either the prose or the content.
  
  
• She's very quick to use her religious beliefs instead of thinking.  By this I mean that you'll find her quite casually attributing an event to God's will (and not thinking it out any further), or justifying a position with by invoking God's desire instead of a thought-out ideology.  Palin invokes Reagan frequently in the book, but Reagan was in fact a very different kind of political animal – he was religious, of course, but his religion was the foundation for his ideology, not the ideology itself.  Palin comes across as having very little ideology beyond her religion and a vague, general sort of Alaskan independence, libertarianism, and scrappiness.  I like the latter elements; the first one scares me.
  
  
• The last ten pages or so were the most interesting part of the entire book.  In this section, she comes closest to offering a vision of what we might expect from her in the future.  I read it closely, as I strongly suspect that Palin will be a factor in our nation's future politics.  I was disappointed, not so much by what's there, but by what's not there.  There is no clear vision, no clear agenda, no clear ideology.  I still know only vaguely what Sarah Palin believes in (other than God) – and I suspect the same thing is true of her.  I don't see a Ronald Reagan or Maggie Thatcher here, but rather a cartoonish copy, without foundation, wrapped in an attractive package.  I wish I could say otherwise.
  
  
• I'm less likely to vote for her now (for any office) than I was before reading the book.  I can still imagine circumstances where I might vote for her as the lesser of two evils.  For example, if one could imagine (say) a 2012 ticket of Obama/Pelosi vs. Palin/Romney, I might well hold my nose and vote the Republican ticket – not so much because I was attracted to it, but because the alternative was so much worse.  But I would certainly not be an enthusiastic supporter of hers.
  
  
• It seems to me unlikely that Palin would actually be able to clinch the Republican ticket in 2012.  Not impossible, but unlikely.  More likely is that she could make a robust run as an independent, like a modern Ross Perot.  I can easily imagine her forming a strong third party with the “tea party” folks as her base.  I can imagine any number of partners for her (Glenn Beck came immediately to mind, though the thought sends shivers of fear through me).  Would such an independent ticket have a chance?  The probabilities are against it; a more likely outcome is a badly split vote on the right, and a unified vote from the liberal opposition – not a pleasant outcome for me. 
  

ClimateGate: The Models are for Crap!

Interesting and entertaining geek's-eye view of the software revealed by ClimateGate, starting with:

This much we have learned from the Climategate scandal: the computer models used to justify the policy proposals are for crap.

Excellent!

On Skepticism...

Reader and friend Doug W. passes along this link to a lecture at Cal Tech by Michael Crichton.  The lecture covers a range of issues, but largely it's an energetic defense of AGW skepticism – and the speech was given almost six years ago!  Here's an excerpt on the reliance of AGW science on computer modeling:

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model."

But now, large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data.

As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs. This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well.

Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands. Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model-makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Anyone who invokes Richard Feymann has my ear <smile>.

Go read the whole thing – it's still fresh and relevant after six years...

ClimateGate: Holy Moley!

Reactions to the ClimateGate revelations seem to be accelerating – and chinks in the lamestream media's nearly perfect shield are appearing.  Lots of online sources are reporting the latest events:

• Phil Jones is temporarily stepping aside as director of the CRU.  This could be the start of a whitewash, or it could be the only way East Anglia could get Jones out of the way without a public fight – can't tell a darned thing from the skimpy press release.  But one thing's for sure: this wouldn't have happened if the university didn't believe there were problems revealed in the ClimateGate data.
  
  
• Malcom Turnbull (leader of Australia's Liberal party and a vocal proponent of AGW mitigation measures) has been replaced by Tony Abbott (an AGW skeptic).  This happened because of resistance within the Liberal party to Turnbull's aggressive promotion of anti-AGW measures – and that resistance was almost certainly solidified because of the ClimateGate revelations.  Further, at least one observer believes that it's likely elections will result from this change – and that ClimateGate-driven skepticism is likely to be a major issue in the campaigning.
  
  
• Reason has a great summary piece (by Ronald Bailey) on the scientific tragedy ClimateGate represents.  Reason is on the leading edge here (as they tend to be), but I expect to see a lot more relatively sober analysis like this – including in the mainstream media.  I'm starting to be cautiously optimistic that the AGW debate is going to get back onto a sound scientific basis...
  
  
• Scientists are starting to speak out about ClimateGate, like Peter Keleman in this Popular Mechanics piece and Derek Lowe on his blog.  It's safe for them to do so now, thanks to the ugly revelations of ClimateGate.  Others can now find a platform, where they couldn't before, like Doug Keenan writing at Pajamas Media.  Expect more like this.
  
  
• AGW skepticism has become politically correct.  Unapologetic commentary can now be found all over the place, not just on fringe blogs (like this one!) and “crank” web sites (examples here, here, and here).  Awesome!

Holy moley!!!

Life on Mars?

NASA scientists are back with a new analysis of the meteorite originally from Mars discovered back in 1996 that they believed showed evidence of fossilized bacteria-like life.  The new analysis, using newly-available technology, shows that alternative explanations involving chemical processes are not likely explanations.  This leaves fossilized living creatures as the only explanation still standing.

This won't close the case for science.  There will have to be much more evidence for living creatures on Mars before it becomes a generally accepted notion.  But if life did in fact exist on Mars (and possibly still does today), then this leads naturally to a couple of very intriguing lines of thought.  First, that possibly life is far more common than we have heretofore believed (if it arose independently on two planets in a single star system, then surely it will have arisen commonly in other star systems).  Second, that possibly life has been “seeded” by something completely outside our star system – perhaps something as simple as chirally-sorted amino acids being distributed by junk floating around in space, or cosmic rays turning out to be the key to amino acid formation.  And of course that latter line of thought will lead some to immediately assume intervention by alien civilizations or deities...

ClimateGate: Follow the Money...

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have long believed that the corrupt behavior of leading AGW scientists was most likely caused by the pursuit of money – grant money, that is.  You'd have to be an idiot not to notice that the more AGW controversy there was, the more grant money magically appeared.

The WSJ is now taking up that notion:

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

While I am totally disgusted and disappointed by the revealed behavior in the CRU trove, there is one very good thing resulting from this: it's going to be very hard for corrupt science to prevail in the AGW debate going forward...

ClimateGate: The Sound of Falling Scales...

Clive Crook writes at The Atlantic, and has written dismissively of AGW skeptics in the past.  Now he's read through the ClimateGate data dump, and comes to another conclusion:

Remember that this is not an academic exercise. We contemplate outlays of trillions of dollars to fix this supposed problem. Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot. These people are willing to subvert the very methods--notably, peer review--that underwrite the integrity of their discipline. Is this really business as usual in science these days? If it is, we should demand higher standards--at least whenever "the science" calls for a wholesale transformation of the world economy. And maybe some independent oversight to go along with the higher standards. 

The IPCC process needs to be fixed, as a matter of the greatest urgency. Read David Henderson or the Wegman report to see how. And in the meantime, let's have some independent inquiries into what has been going on.

My general reading through the lamestream media picks up many hints of this, though not usually so forthrightly stated.  My sense is that even the sheep in the lamestream media are beginning to have doubts.

Good.

ClimateGate: A Skeptical Scientist...

Richard Lindzen, a prominent AGW skeptic whose writing we've quoted before, has an excellent piece in the WSJ today.  In particular, Lindzen does a good job with a piece of the AGW puzzle that most people don't understand – the models' reliance on positive feedback systems to predict much higher temperatures and sea levels in the future:

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

Many observers, including me, have pointed out that Mother Nature seems to abhor positive feedback systems – they very rarely occur, and where they do, the lifetime of the affected system is very short.  The Earth has been around for something like 4 billion years; if a positive feedback system actually existed in our climate, common sense says it would have led to a horrible result long before now – such as during one of the many past periods when carbon dioxide levels were much higher than they are now...

ClimateGate: Tab Dump...

Time to go to work, but here are seven more articles or posts on ClimateGate that I recommend for your education: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I don't think this genie is going back in the bottle...

ClimateGate: Monkton Asks for Criminal Prosecution...

ClimateGate: Michael Ramirez

Unemployment Index...

Google's index of unemployment-related searches just took a nosedive, falling from the highest levels of the year to the lowest levels in the span of a couple of weeks. I have no idea what would account for this, nor do I have any idea whether we should think of this as an optimistic omen. It will be interesting to watch this over the next few weeks to see if this was a leading indicator of something we'll see later in government statistics...

ClimateGate: Programmers React...

The trove of software code contained in the CRU hacker data dump has now had enough time to be analyzed by a good number of completely independent programmers, myself included.  You may recall that one of my reactions was to be appalled at the poor quality of the code.

I was not alone:

Up to this point, it was difficult to challenge the conclusions of AGW-believing climate scientists because most geeks don't have much expertise in climatology. We tend to consider ourselves scientists and to give other scientists in other areas of expertise the benefit of the doubt. Without a great deal of experience in climatology, it's hard for a geek to justify spending much time questioning the modes and methods of professional climate researchers.

However, the email leak has changed all this. Along with a hoard of emails, some source code for the computer climate models was also hacked and released to the public -- and the source code is an unusable mess. It doesn't take expertise in climatology to look at source code and determine that the code is garbage. There are many more geeks with software expertise than with climate expertise, and the geek community will go through every line of code and likely conclude that the computer models are so flawed that any conclusions drawn on them are without merit.

Despite the liberal tendencies of many geeks, I believe that the source code evidence will be insurmountable for most. Some will continue to cling to AGW because of a devotion to left-wing politics, but the majority of geeks will abandon their belief, and that abandonment by geeks will truly spell the end for AGW.

Read the whole thing here and here.

There's Snow in Them Thar Hills!

Above about 5,000 feet (1,700 meters) altitude in our local mountains, yesterday's rainstorm was a snow storm.  We drove up this morning, taking a little-used single-lane paved road from just south of Pine Valley up alongside Noble Canyon to the area just north of Laguna Peak.  Often this road is closed when there's snow on the ground, but today the gates were still open and we had a lovely drive.

Miki, our youngest field spaniel, came along with us.  He's seen snow before, but only a couple of times; it's still a novelty to him.  We stopped near the high point of the road and had a delightful romp in the snow with Miki (photos below).  Toward the end, I throw a few snowballs at him when he wasn't looking – it took him five snowballs to figure out that I was doing it!

   

CRU Does a U-Turn, is Releasing Climate Data...

For years now, the CRU has had a policy of keeping secret the key data needed to verify AGW.  Despite severe criticism even from within the scientific community (and even more from outside), they held onto this policy.  Of course this policy raised eyebrows and doubts about the rigor of their work.

In the wake of the ClimateGate leaks, the CRU has now reversed course, and says it will release all data (other than what they've lost – see earlier post) just as soon as they get releases from all involved. 

Their somewhat self-serving announcement is here.  As you're reading it, remember that this crowd is desperately trying to portray their innocence...

Given their past behavior, I'm a bit skeptical that the data will actually end up being public.  We'll see...

Mann to be Investigated...

Professor Michael Mann (of “hockey stick” temperature graph fame) is being investigated by his employer, Pennsylvania State University. 

We shouldn't read too much into this.  Launching an investigation is pretty much a reflexive action of bureaucracies; they're a time-honored way of deflecting blame from those in charge.  Once we see the results of the investigation, we'll know whether this was an exercise in obfuscation or a genuine inquiry...

ClimateGate: Data Dump...

In today's London Times:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

Mistakes happen, and this fact by itself doesn't really prove anything.  But it is mighty suspicious looking when combined with all the other attempts at hiding and obfuscation employed by the CRU gang.

The article goes on to say that the loss of this data means that other scientists can't check the CRU's work.  That's not quite true – the lost data can be regenerated by re-doing the studies.  This will be time-consuming and expensive, but it's practically free by comparison to the climate change mitigations being considered based on conclusions drawn from the data.  Re-doing the studies seems like a no-brainer...

Storm's Over...

But not before it dumped a total of 1.06 inches (about 26 mm) of rain on us!  This morning it's clear and sunny, and the chaparral is full of bright, saturated colors on the dust-free leaves in the bright sunlight.  El Cajon mountain was lit up with the early morning sun as we looked out our front windows at daybreak. 

Winter in Lawson Valley has arrived...

Rain and Hail, Oh My!

It's 11 am here, and we've already had nearly three quarters of an inch (about 18 mm) of rain.  Well, actually, for the past half hour or so it's been a mixture of rain and hail.  The individual pieces of hail are about the size of a kernel of corn, but there are so many of them that they're collecting into piles that look an awful lot like snowfall.  The air temperature is still well above freezing, so the hail is melting very quickly.

Jeez, it feels good to have this most affirmative end to the fire season!

A few photos from our patio (taken with a crummy cell phone camera):

It's Official Now: Fire Season is Over!

Oh, look at that lovely, lovely little blip on the graph at right. That's showing nearly a half inch (about 11mm) of rain since early this morning. We have puddles on the ground, and our yard is a sea of mud.

This is already more than enough rain to declare the official end of the 2009 fire season. Whew! We escaped without any serious fires this year!

Best of all: we're expecting even more rain today and tomorrow. And the snow level is supposed to be down to 4,500 feet (about 1,500 meters) this afternoon – we may have to go for a little drive to see the snow!

ClimateGate: Peer-Reviewed Studies...

Mark Steyn weighs in on ClimateGate.  An excerpt:

Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the "peer-review" process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The "science" of the CRU dominates the "science" behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the "science" behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it's President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.

But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed."

Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review". When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Mr. Steyn has caught rather exactly one of the central horrors of ClimateGate: the success of the CRU in perverting the standard science check-and-balance of peer-review. Go read the whole thing!

The Mayaguez Incident...

Long-time readers of this blog may remember that I was on board the USS Long Beach in May of 1975, during the Mayaguez incident.  The Cambodian Kmer Rouge forces captured the Mayaguez, a US Navy supply ship manned by a civilian crew.

At the time the Mayaguez was captured, the USS Long Beach was in the port of Sattahip, Thailand, and much of the crew (including me) was in Bankok.  The crew was recalled and the ship got underway on the second day of the four-day incident.  We sailed just over 200 miles to the southeast, to Koh Tang island, some 60 miles off the coast of Cambodia (modern satellite photo at right).  I remember seeing the island from the deck of the ship, watching the air support and ship-based bombardment in action.

Forty one Americans died in the Mayaguez incident, including eighteen who died in heavy fighting on Koh Tang.

Just recently it occurred to me that at this remove their might actually be a book about the incident, and in fact I found two, which I bought and read: The Last Battle, by Ralph Wetterhahn and The Four Days of Mayaguez by Roy Rowan.  Both were fascinating reads for me, the former for its rich content, the latter for the human story of the captured crew.

One thing about both books absolutely floored me: neither of them contains any mention of the USS Long Beach, or any other US Navy ships besides the USS Holt, the USS Wilson, and the USS Coral Sea (all of which were direct participants in the battle).  I don't know for certain how many other US Navy ships were present, as my memory of events almost 35 years ago is a bit shaky.  But my best estimate is that at least six US Navy ships were there (and I think one Australian ship as well). 

My role on the ship kept me in CIC (Combat Information Center) most of the time, and I had access to some information as the battle progressed.  On reading these books, I realize now that what I “knew” at the time was very sketchy and often inaccurate.  The USS Long Beach's primary role was air defense control, and that's the main involvement I remember us actually having in the incident.  However, there was discussion of our Marine detachment (roughly 60 men) participating in the rescue effort, and also there was the possibility that the 5 inch guns on board would be used in supporting the troops on Koh Tang.

It was quite a strange experience to read two books about an incident that I was a witness to...

ClimateGate: Excellent Observations and Discussions...

Armed and Dangerous is a new blog to me, written by Eric S. Raymond, who may be familiar to you as the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.  Based on reading the posts on the front page, I've added it to my daily reading list.  There are some excellent posts on ClimateGate up there now, with the comments being just as interesting as the posts themselves...

Two Adult Cats, Badly in Need of a Home...

The Steele Canyon Veterinary Clinic has two beautiful, fluffy adult Siamese cats (one flame-point, one lilac-point) available for adoption.  If one of these steals your heart, please call them at 619/659-7274.  Both are in need of a loving home, either together or separately...

  

ClimateGate: McIntyre Begins Digging into the Data...

I've been waiting eagerly for this: the well-informed AGW skeptic Steve McIntyre has started digging into the trove of ClimateGate data.  Of course he's finding interesting stuff.  This post is also interesting, for a completely different reason: McIntyre is attempting to get other scientists who were revealed by the ClimateGate emails to be critical of the IPCC data to comment (without success so far).

If you're at all interested in ClimateGate and the AGW debate, I highly recommend regularly visiting Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre's blog)...

ClimateGate: WSJ Weighs In...

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on ClimateGate with this conclusion:

The response to this among the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science we've got. The proof for this is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature.

Even so, by rigging the rules, they've made it impossible to know how good it really is. And then, one is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim. If there's an innocent explanation for that, we'd love to hear it.

It's a good, short piece – read the whole thing here.

ClimateGate: Skewed Science...

Interesting piece from the Canadian newspaper, the National Post.  Since the ClimateGate story broke, such skeptical pieces are suddenly being published all over the place.  It's too bad that it takes a scandal to prod the lamestream media into more balanced reporting.  Now I'm actually a little worried that they're headed too far the other way!

Here's an excerpt:

Millions of measurements, global coverage, consistently rising temperatures, case closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU’s average temperature data doesn’t jive with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. Last year he and three colleagues plotted an average temperature chart for Europe that shows a surprisingly different trend. Aside from a very cold spell in 1940, temperatures were flat for most of the 20th century, showing no warming while fossil fuel use grew. Then in 1987 they shot up by about 1 C and have not shown any warming since. This pattern cannot be explained by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, unless some critical threshold was reached in 1987; nor can it be explained by climate models.

Courtillot and Jean-Louis Le Mouël, a French geo-magneticist, and three Russian colleagues first came into climate research as outsiders four years ago. The Earth’s magnetic field responds to changes in solar output, so geomagnetic measurements are good indicators of solar activity. They thought it would be interesting to compare solar activity with climatic temperature measurements.

Their first step was to assemble a database of temperature measurements and plot temperature charts. To do that, they needed raw temperature measurements that had not been averaged or adjusted in any way. Courtillot asked Phil Jones, the scientist who runs the CRU database, for his raw data, telling him (according to one of the ‘Climategate’ emails that surfaced following the recent hacking of CRU’s computer systems) “there may be some quite important information in the daily values which is likely lost on monthly averaging.” Jones refused Courtillot’s request for data, saying that CRU had “signed agreements with national meteorological services saying they would not pass the raw data onto third parties.” (Interestingly, in another of the CRU emails, Jones said something very different: “I took a decision not to release our [meteorological] station data, mainly because of McIntyre,” referring to Canadian Steve McIntyre, who helped uncover the flaws in the hockey stick graph.)

ClimateGate: Thoughts from a Critical IPCC Reviewer...

Vincent Gray is a scientist from New Zealand, and an anthropogenic global warming skeptic.  He was one of the expert reviewers on the infamous IPCC report, though nearly all of his comments were ignored.  PajamasMedia has a brief piece by him that starts with this:

Nothing about the revelations surprises me. I have maintained email correspondence with most of these scientists for many years, and I know several personally. I long ago realized that they were faking the whole exercise.

When you enter into a debate with any of them, they always stop cold when you ask an awkward question. This applies even when you write to a government department or a member of Parliament. I and many of my friends have grown accustomed to our failure to publish and to lecture, and to the rejection of our comments submitted prior to every IPCC report.

Read the whole thing.

Al Gore's Organic Vegetable Patch...

More from the London Telegraph:

Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.

“Al Gore's organic vegetable patch” – gotta love that British humor...  Read the whole thing.

ClimateGate: Oh, the Animals!

Heh!

ClimateGate: How They All Squirmed...

By James Delingpole at the London Telegraph:

Among the many great amusements of the Climategate scandal are the myriad imaginative excuses being offered by the implicated scientists and their friends in the MSM as to why this isn’t a significant story. Here are some of the best:

Just go read it.  You know you want to...

ClimateGate: More Source Code Analysis...

Bloggers and scientists all over the world are digging into the IDL and Fortran programs that are part of the ClimateGate trove.  Here's a nice summary of the current findings from American Thinker.  A taste:

One can only imagine the angst suffered daily by the co-conspirators, who knew full well that the "Documents" sub-folder of the CRU FOI2009 file contained more than enough probative program source code to unmask CRU's phantom methodology. 

In fact, there are hundreds of IDL and FORTRAN source files buried in dozens of subordinate sub-folders. And many do properly analyze and chart maximum latewood density (MXD), the growth parameter commonly utilized by CRU scientists as a temperature proxy, from raw or legitimately normalized data. Ah, but many do so much more. 

Skimming through the often spaghetti-like code, the number of programs which subject the data to a mixed-bag of transformative and filtering routines is simply staggering. Granted, many of these "alterations" run from benign smoothing algorithms (e.g., omitting rogue outliers) to moderate infilling mechanisms (e.g., estimating missing station data from that of those closely surrounding). But many others fall into the precarious range between highly questionable (removing MXD data which demonstrate poor correlations with local temperature) to downright fraudulent (replacing MXD data entirely with measured data to reverse a disorderly trend-line).

In fact, workarounds for the post-1960 "divergence problem," as described by both RealClimate and Climate Audit, can be found throughout the source code. So much so that perhaps the most ubiquitous programmer's comment (REM) I ran across warns that the particular module "Uses 'corrected' MXD - but shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures."

What exactly is meant by "corrected” MXD," you ask? Outstanding question -- and the answer appears amorphous from program to program. Indeed, while some employ one or two of the aforementioned "corrections," others throw everything but the kitchen sink at the raw data prior to output.

The more I discover or read about these “scientists”, the madder I get at them...

A Different Twist on ClimateGate...

Some commentators – predominantly political commentators – who are skeptical of AGW are not so much skeptical of the science as they are skeptical of the motivation for the science.  In particular, they believe that the environmental movement is largely controlled by socialists (or those even further to the left) who see the environmental issues as an excellent source of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that can be used as levers to get the electorate in democracies to choose to give government control over many areas of their lives.  These commentators think that the pro-AGW scientists are “useful idiots”, perfect for exploitation by the socialist activists in control of the environmental movement. 

This all reeks of conspiricism to me, and it's in my general nature to be skeptical of such claims.  Stupidity and avarice, it seems to me, are perfectly sufficient to explain everything I've seen so far in ClimateGate.

But here's an observation that I must admit lends a little weight to the contentions of these commentators.  I'm going to start watching this a little more credulously than I have been...

Video Primer on the AGW “Settled Science”

Thanksgiving in Jamul...

Today is the first day Debbie and I have had together in about two weeks – first I was off on a combined personal and business trip, then she was up in Murietta, cooking for a fancy-schmancy dog training seminar (trainers and trainees).  She got back home late last night.

Our Thanksgiving Day feast this year will be with our friends and neighbors, Jim and Michelle Barnick (who live just up the hill from us).  They're having a few dozen friends and relatives over.  Our contribution is the pumpkin pie, which Debbie and I just finished making. 

We had some help from the dogs.  I made the pie crusts (a simple crust made of ginger snap crumbs and butter).  I accidentally brushed a few crumbs off onto the floor, where Race (our border collie yearling) found them.  You could see him immediately take on a wondering look, as if to say “Where the hell has this been my whole life?” 

Then a little while later I had the job of mixing the filling.  After pouring the filling into the pies (and a couple of extra custard cups), I had a nice, big mixing bowl coated with the filling mixture.  Basically that's eggs, evaporated milk, and pumpkin, with some spices and sugar.  If you're a dog, I don't think it gets any better than that.  Suffice it to say that the mixing bowl was shortly extremely clean, at a molecular level.  I could have just let it dry and thrown it back in the cabinet, but for form's sake I actually did wash it off...

Now the pies are in the oven, the dishes are all washed, and we're just relaxing for a bit.  In a few hours we'll wander up the hill to start our feast.  A few hours after that, we'll be painfully full of excellent food and drink, and we'll be smiling from the good company of our friends...

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, on this beautiful day in the chaparral of Lawson Valley, just east of Jamul...

ClimateGate Editorial...

By Lorrie Goldstein in the Toronto Sun.  The lede:

If you're wondering how the robot-like march of the world's politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed "climategate," it's because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don't give a s*** about "the science."

They never have. 

Go read the whole thing.

Can citizens win against the warmenists?  I think that maybe, just maybe, the answer is “yes!”

The Proclamation...

We have much to be thankful for, even as there is much to be worried about.  I've never heard it said better than this:

By the President of the United States of America.


A Proclamation.


The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.


In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.


Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.


By the President: Abraham Lincoln

It Begins...

Skeptical scientists are starting to tear into the raw data recently revealed by hackers who posted thousands of documents from East Anglia's CRU (see earlier posts).  Some New Zealanders have found that the raw data from their country was heavily – and arbitrarily – manipulated to show a hockey stick where none exists in the raw data.

Expect much, much more of this sort of disclosure...