Shortly after I started this blog, I was going over google listings to see how it was faring, and I came across this article by one Frank Schaeffer:
The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary all backward — there-is-no-global-warming — rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled.
While I somewhat agree on what he says about the Republican base, I don’t consider myself part of that base – however, I do hold the “rube reality” view about global-warming…that is, I question, among other things, the accuracy of the data provided to the public by politicians and politically-motivated “scientists.” But, like most collectivists (who are usually the true reactionaries, compared to real liberals, in the original Enlightenment-age sense of the word), it’s easier for Mr. Schaeffer to lump everyone he disagrees with into one single group, and then pillory them for their ignorance.
I’ve questioned the science and methods of the so-called “consensus” for years. I won’t get into the details, this article covers most of them fairly well. Suffice to say, that I’ve been told I’m a conspiracy theorist when I discuss their lack of using the scientific method or any peer review outside of governmental bodies being funded to prove a pre-decided agenda.
“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” – Karl Popper
I’ve also been told that as I’m not an “expert,” I’m not allowed to hold my own opinion as it differs from the “consensus.”
Well, that’s changed with the leak of these emails and, more importantly, source code files from the Climate Research Unit. I haven’t really paid much attention until very recently, because a) the main stream media is doing their usual job of propagandizing instead of reporting the news, and b) none of it’s a big surprise to me – not when Al Gore claims science proves this and that, then claims the “debate is over” and that any remaining debate has been purchased by Big Oil. Well, I’m not owned by Big Oil, but Al Gore is heavily invested in ethanol and has pushed it quite hard, even though ethanol has a larger carbon footprint, is far less efficient, and as a result, causes more pollution then oil. In addition, the climate change advocates have increasingly equated skeptics and deniers of their theories to Holocaust deniers. That’s not science, it’s a moral crusade thinly disguising a lust for power.
Yet, this leak has given plenty of evidence that I can claim to review as an expert! I’ve been programming since grade school, and have done it professionally for over 20 years – if that doesn’t make someone an expert, nothing else will – well, except for being funded by governmental agencies, which we all know are always morally superior to big business interests (that’s why they always have the force of States behind their agendas, right?!?). The articles here, here, and here, review the code at the bottom of this article. As the author of the second two articles points out, this doesn’t prove anything about global warming one way or the other. What it does prove is that the data was tampered with in a way that makes the conclusions drawn inaccurate. The conclusions of the IPCC (a political body, not a scientific one) are clearly skewed, and much peer review is needed to determine the true situation with our climate. Are the changes being claimed valid? If they are valid, are they significant enough to cause concern in the highly-dynamic, always changing, never static system our climate is? And if so, are the causes really anthropogenic in nature? As certain as the world’s political elites have become about this, I can’t imagine why they would have any issues with opening this up to public scrutiny and peer review.
However, they are reacting exactly as one would expect them to if they had something to hide. In this BBC article, for example:
In a statement, Professor Thomas Stocker and Professor Qin Dahe, co-chairmen of the IPCC’s working group 1, condemned the act of posting the private e-mails on the internet, but avoided commenting on their content.
Why wouldn’t you comment on the content if you’re so dead-certain of your theories? And why do you condemn an act that provides information to the world’s public that you would prefer hidden? Do you have something against democratic institutions? Furthermore,
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, said it was no coincidence the information was released in the run-up to the summit.
He claimed unnamed conspirators could have paid for Russian hackers to break into the university computers to steal the e-mails.
He said the theft was a scandal and was “probably ordered” to disrupt the confidence negotiators have in the science.
Name the conspirators, or hush up, you tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. Besides, I will give very favorable odds that the hack was an inside job – espionage like this almost always is. Have I mentioned that data-, network-, and system- security is one of my specialties?
John Mitchell, head of climate science at the Met Office, said the evidence for man-made global warming was overwhelming – and the data would show that.
“So this is not an issue of whether we are confident or not in the figures for the trend in global warming, it’s more about being open and transparent,” he told the BBC.
Open and transparent means only sharing this data after you’ve been embarrassed by hackers, does it?
In another BBC article:
“Despite the best efforts of the sceptics [sic], there is no instance in these e-mails that anyone has found so far – and there are millions of people looking – that suggests the scientists manipulated their fundamental data,” Professor Watson, from the university’s School of Environmental Sciences, stated.
…Professor Watson added: “The climate sceptics would have us believe the e-mails invalidate the CRU data set, but they don’t.”
I’m not so sure about the e-mails, but the code certainly does suggest the data was manipulated, and therefore does invalidate the conclusions drawn from you nitwits by the CRU data set. And while you’re all playing CYA instead of scientist, the following views gain more prominence daily:
Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator told BBC News that the e-mail row will have a “huge impact” on next week’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Mohammad Al-Sabban said that he expected it to derail the single biggest objective of the summit – to agree limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.
“It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” he suggested.
I don’t understand how a scandal can prove or disprove a scientific theory, but I do understand the danger of mixing politics and science. Here we have a possibly worthy cause that’s in danger of being permanently associated with the quacks who hijacked it for their own selfish political, business, and socio-economic agenda.
The NAZI’s did this with their archaeological research to bolster their claims of racial superiority and to justify, in their minds at least, the Final Solution. If the climate bureaucrats insist on playing politics like usual, instead of making their case with sound science for once, then pollution will continue to become a more pressing issue – regardless of whether it’s causing climate change or not – because climate science will lose all credibility and be lumped in with NAZI archaeology as pseudoscience. As it should be, since many of the same methods are being used! For example, this damning document says, among other things:
If the best science is to lead to the best policy, then science people have to be mixed with policy people.
Were the NAZI and Soviet science programs really so successful that we should follow their example?
In the meantime, it’s business as usual for the world’s elites (who will use seven times the global-warming gases at Copenhagen as the rest of us during the same time period, while enjoying their free hookers there) and bureaucracies (as the EPA prepares to label carbon dioxide – the gas we all send into the air every time we exhale – dangerous).
But enough of my appeals to authority. There will be no information-hiding here! Here is the code I’ve seen posted, reviewed, and looked at myself. If you’re a programmer, check it out for yourself. If you’re not a programmer, find someone who is and have them look. At the very least, check out the comments (they’re the lines that start with a semicolon) – things like “fudge factor” and “APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE” don’t require programming expertise to understand.
;
; PLOTS 'ALL' REGION MXD timeseries from age banded and from hugershoff
; standardised datasets.
; Reads Harry's regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
; with missing values set appropriately. Uses mxd, and just the
; "all band" timeseries
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
loadct,39
def_1color,20,color='red'
plot,[0,1]
multi_plot,nrow=4,layout='large'
if !d.name eq 'X' then begin
window, ysize=800
!p.font=-1
endif else begin
!p.font=0
device,/helvetica,/bold,font_size=18
endelse
;
; Get regional tree lists and rbar
;
restore,filename='reglists.idlsave'
harryfn=['nwcan','wnam','cecan','nweur','sweur','nsib','csib','tib',$
'esib','allsites']
;
rawdat=fltarr(4,2000)
for i = nreg-1 , nreg-1 do begin
fn='mxd.'+harryfn(i)+'.pa.mean.dat'
print,fn
openr,1,fn
readf,1,rawdat
close,1
;
densadj=reform(rawdat(2:3,*))
ml=where(densadj eq -99.999,nmiss)
densadj(ml)=!values.f_nan
;
x=reform(rawdat(0,*))
kl=where((x ge 1400) and (x le 1992))
x=x(kl)
densall=densadj(1,kl) ; all bands
densadj=densadj(0,kl) ; 2-6 bands
;
; Now normalise w.r.t. 1881-1960
;
mknormal,densadj,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
mknormal,densall,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot them
;
filter_cru,20,tsin=densall,tslow=tslow,/nan
cpl_barts,x,densall,title='Age-banded MXD from all sites',$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
zeroline=tslow,yrange=[-7,3]
oplot,x,tslow,thick=3
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
endfor
;
; Restore the Hugershoff NHD1 (see Nature paper 2)
;
xband=x
restore,filename='../tree5/densadj_MEAN.idlsave'
; gets: x,densadj,n,neff
;
; Extract the post 1600 part
;
kl=where(x ge 1400)
x=x(kl)
densadj=densadj(kl)
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densadj=densadj+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot it too
;
filter_cru,20,tsin=densadj,tslow=tshug,/nan
cpl_barts,x,densadj,title='Hugershoff-standardised MXD from all sites',$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
zeroline=tshug,yrange=[-7,3],bar_color=20
oplot,x,tshug,thick=3,color=20
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
; Now overplot their bidecadal components
;
plot,xband,tslow,$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
yrange=[-6,2],thick=3,title='Low-pass (20-yr) filtered comparison'
oplot,x,tshug,thick=3,color=20
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
; Now overplot their 50-yr components
;
filter_cru,50,tsin=densadj,tslow=tshug,/nan
filter_cru,50,tsin=densall,tslow=tslow,/nan
plot,xband,tslow,$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
yrange=[-6,2],thick=3,title='Low-pass (50-yr) filtered comparison'
oplot,x,tshug,thick=3,color=20
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
; Now compute the full, high and low pass correlations between the two
; series
;
perst=1400.
peren=1992.
;
openw,1,'corr_age2hug.out'
thalf=[10.,30.,50.,100.]
ntry=n_elements(thalf)
printf,1,'Correlations between timeseries'
printf,1,'Age-banded vs. Hugershoff-standardised'
printf,1,' Region Full <10 >10 >30 >50 >100'
;
kla=where((xband ge perst) and (xband le peren))
klh=where((x ge perst) and (x le peren))
ts1=densadj(klh)
ts2=densall(kla)
;
r1=correlate(ts1,ts2)
rall=fltarr(ntry)
for i = 0 , ntry-1 do begin
filter_cru,thalf(i),tsin=ts1,tslow=tslow1,tshigh=tshi1,/nan
filter_cru,thalf(i),tsin=ts2,tslow=tslow2,tshigh=tshi2,/nan
if i eq 0 then r2=correlate(tshi1,tshi2)
rall(i)=correlate(tslow1,tslow2)
endfor
;
printf,1,'ALL SITES',r1,r2,rall,$
format='(A11,2X,6F6.2)'
;
printf,1,' '
printf,1,'Correlations carried out over the period ',perst,peren
;
close,1
;
end
Tags: Climate Change, Climategate, CRU, IPCC, UNEP
