New Batch of Leaked Climate Emails 585
New submitter kenboldt writes "Someone going by the alias 'foia' has dropped a link to a zip file containing thousands more emails similar to those released in 2009. There are apparently many more which are locked behind a password, presumably waiting to be released at some time in the future."
The University of East Anglia has released a brief statement indicating that the emails were probably obtained during the 2009 breach and held back until now as "a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy."
Re:Yeah, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Right, because last time around, it turned out that there was a big conspiracy and lots of people got fired and no one believes in global warming any more.
oh, wait, that's exactly what didn't happen.
Re:Yeah, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Richard Muller (Score:5, Informative)
And every time there is evidence that it is just a political con game
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/ [technologyreview.com]
As the hockey stick was, as the emails demonstrating knowledge of the fraud that was ongoing did you just get the greens closing ranks and hoping if they keep a united front up, the ludites hatred of all things tech, and the political class's willingness to profit from crisis will carry their position forward.
That's a nice article you linked there. Richard Muller? Maybe you bothered to follow up with what he actually found? The rest of Slashdot did [slashdot.org] and I think you might be interested in it.
Re:Climate change ceased to be a scientific issue (Score:2, Informative)
You don't seem to have fully read the very article you reference as proof of your intended point, rather it appears you cherry-picked what confirmed your bias. Did you read this paragraph?
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions. Suppose, for example, that future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously--that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small--then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.
Or what about the final paragraph?
A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.
The author of your "evidence" doesn't even share your conspiratorial conclusions.
Look, folks, Slashdot has its share of crazies, too!
Re:No, they aren't (Score:5, Informative)
Global warming is a done discussion. Governments and corporations are already moving to adapt -- except for a few parasites like the Koch brothers (who are funding much of the anti-science "research" that you are lapping up so eagerly), who simply need to be pried off our nation's neck and burned like the blood-ticks that they are.
Except the Koch brothers latest efforts were less than fruitful: http://www.berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_Averaging_Process [berkeleyearth.org]
At a time when TV starts to edit-out AGW shows: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/frozen_planet_freezes_out_clim.php?page=all [cjr.org]
They are acting like its because of everyday scheduling concerns, but notice that ALL of the networks which chose to remove an episode singled out THAT particular one. BBC refuses to name the other countries that won't be seeing the AGW episode, but we know that Discovery Channel (e.g. the USA) won't be broadcasting it... surely it would upset advertisers (e.g. US Chamber of Commerce, who have become active denialists) to show that episode.
This and the emails are part of an effort to keep AGW from becoming a major election issue at a time when it is tangibly starting to hurt Americans.
No the models they mean are like these... (Score:3, Informative)
http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001317verification_of_1990.html [colorado.edu]
Those are the IPCC predictions from 1990 out to now. Gee for some reason we are well under the temperature they predicted.
Or Hansen's 1988 model
here
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/hansen20.gif [wordpress.com]
Oops
You Brought Up Richard Muller, Not Me (Score:4, Informative)
This is what your climate skeptic had to say
I don't understand, that's not my climate skeptic, you linked to an article from 2004 written by Richard Muller. I merely provided you the results of his research, I didn't even indicate whether or not I sided with him!
So lets just ignore the part that the greens were pushing about the climate skeptic who had a come to god moment.
What the fuck are you talking about? You brought Richard Muller into this conversation -- are you "the greens"? Furthermore, you used an article he wrote seven years ago to summarily discredit everything apparently even somehow validating "the emails demonstrating knowledge of the fraud that was ongoing." What the hell, man?
Lets look at what one his team members had to say about his come to god paper.
"But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped. Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1eTMUgUpc [dailymail.co.uk]"
When you identify me as a "green" that you "can't talk to" I don't know why I continue to help you but here's another article [judithcurry.com] you might find informative that follows your Daily Mail article by a matter of hours. It's a little more valuable because instead of it being some news organization (WSJ, Daily Mail, whoever) hell bent on making a story and cherry picking comments to make them sound the most inflammatory, it's actually Judith Curry actually telling you how she actually feels. She has reservations and that's good but she opens with:
I had a 90 minute meeting with Richard Muller this evening. I have to say that there isn’t much that we disagree on.
Re:The saddest thing is that there are not two sid (Score:5, Informative)
Like the way lots of movie dramas are "based on actual events", probably.
Re:When you're out of rational arguments... (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation is approximately in balance at all times. In the absence of a greenhouse effect, the Earth would need to be about 255K to produce enough outgoing longwave radiation to remain in balance. Due to the greenhouse effect, not all of the outgoing radiation makes it to space. To maintain the balance, the Earth must be warmer than 255K so that enough outgoing longwave radiation makes it through the atmosphere and into space. That's why average temperature on Earth is actually around 288K. All other things equal, if the greenhouse effect is increased, the Earth must warm to reach a new balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation. This is as close to fact as science can get, and isn't really up for debate.
The only legitimate argument against warming caused by increased greenhouse gases is that negative feedbacks will decrease the incoming solar radiation. That can primarily be accomplished by clouds and aerosols, neither of which are well understood or predicted by models. However, even with the uncertainty about negative feedbacks, it is very likely that increasing greenhouse gases is resulting in a warming of the Earth.
Just because there is poor agreement on the regional impacts of a warmer Earth does not mean the Earth isn't warming. The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is largely due to human activities. It's a fact that the model human lifestyle produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. The increase in greenhouse gases is very highly correlated to industrialization.
This is an environmental issue. The preponderance of evidence is very strongly favors that humans are mostly responsible for the warming of the Earth that has already occurred in the past decades and that the Earth will warm at a faster pace in the future if current trends continue.
We should be very concerned. The regional climate changes will likely place greater strain in some areas on the availability of essential resources to support the human population. It is not out of the question that the overall impacts of such a warming could place enough strain on resources that the Earth would be unable to support a human population of seven billion people and growing. Nobody really knows what the impacts would be, but those concerns are hardly unfounded.
Re:That other study (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, we need to get China and India in on these as well. But guess what- climate change affects them too. Get a decent global solution and they'd probably be pretty happy. After all, it's way easier to take X Gton of crap out of the air when you are starting from a base of nothing, so companies in the US would probably happily buy credits off of the poorer countries. Less carbon in the air, poor countries get a boost financially, rich world countries get years to experiment with solutions before implementing them in higher cost areas. You can even go the Australia route and simply give back the money to the people affected by higher energy prices.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:3, Informative)
"The oil companies" have been sponsoring AGW research for many years. Don't fall for popular myths, verify facts yourself.
This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):
British Petroleum, Department of Energy, National Power, Shell, Sultanate of Oman, United States Department of Energy
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/ [uea.ac.uk]
Re:Yes it is! (Score:5, Informative)
How many thousands of years have whole forests burned due to natural causes? My guess would be enough to release way more greenhouse gas than our burning of fossil fuels.
Your guess would be wrong. The difference being that the carbon is forests is carbon that is already in the carbon cycle. If forests don't burn they eventually decay and release the carbon back into the atmosphere anyway. The carbon from fossil fuels is carbon that has been sequestered from the carbon cycle for in most cases 100's of millions of years or more. So it is carbon that was not in the carbon cycle until we added it back in. The proof of the fact that your guess is wrong is that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has never been above around 300 ppmv for millions of years but since the advent of human burning of fossil fuels it has risen to 390 ppmv in a bit over 200 years. That is unprecedented in the existence of the genus homo.
Re:When you're out of rational arguments... (Score:1, Informative)
"No, YOU don't. Climate scientists have a pretty damn good idea."
I think a number of climate scientists will disagree with you and appreciate you not speaking for all of them. A lot of climate scientests, and a number of high-profile ones, have in peer review rejected the IPCC assessment of "climate change", and many have accussed the IPCC of manipulating data to further their case. Feel free to spend 10 minutes doing some Google searching to look into it, as I made the effort to.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:4, Informative)
Start to inquire with the following:
1. Coal plant operators
2. Coal plant builders
3. Coal mining corps
I can vouch that #2 will give you the money if you can convince them that you're not a fraud, for a reason of having observed one do everything to win favor of crappy populist organizations like Greenpeace through buying their local activists dinners to attend their seminars on how less polluting the new coal plants are. Insider info here.
Fact is, big corporations want to make money in the future in addition to now, and that means cleaning the dirty image that is in the people's (and politicians' who decide on new building permits) minds right now. So if you can do a reliable study that global warming isn't man made, then coal industry will be able to reliably shrink it to a small fraction of the current one, and still make the same profits.
We're talking pretty damn big figures here, all up for grabs. Perhaps the fact that no one has yet succeeded in taking that money is one of the best capitalist-style pieces of proof that it really is likely man-made. Because greed really does motivate people.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Informative)
Climate scientists don't make much money.
Lying climate change deniers like the Koch brothers and many thousands of their other petrofuel and polluter cronies do make millions.
You are a lying fool.
Re:No, they aren't (Score:4, Informative)
The emails don't show what you said. You just want them to show that.
The emails show competitive professionals who have the same kinds of human flaws in any line of work. Yet they do have the integrity to produce science that is reliable.
Even if what you said were true about their conduct, it would only show that the scientific method, the scientific community and science are exactly the opposite of what you said about the institution: the reliable science is fundamentally strong.
You and the deniers, though, are extremely counterproductive.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:3, Informative)
.
Jones and his fellow geography lecturers are on thin ice (sic) and they know it.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:3, Informative)
Feel free to support your claims.
James Hansen, Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
(from a link posted elsewhere in this thread on the millions of dollars Hansen apparently made from his activism while on the public payroll)
Re:No, they aren't (Score:5, Informative)
Not all scientists have the integrity of the BEST researchers
I agree.
Continued global warming "skepticism" is a proper and a necessary part of the scientific process. The Wall St. Journal Op-Ed by one of us (Muller) seemed to take the opposite view with its title and subtitle: "The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism -- There were good reasons for doubt, until now." But those words were not written by Muller. The title and the subtitle of the submitted Op-Ed were "Cooling the Warming Debate - Are you a global warming skeptic? If not, perhaps you should be. Let me explain why." The title and subtitle were changed by the editors without consulting or seeking permission from the author. Readers are encouraged to ignore the title and read the content of the Op-Ed.
http://berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#disagreement [berkeleyearth.org]
Berkeley Earth has not addressed issues of the tree ring and proxy data, climate model accuracy, or human attribution.
http://berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#skepticism [berkeleyearth.org]
Exxon's Funding of Denialism (Score:5, Informative)
ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate sceptic groups, records show [guardian.co.uk] "ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change."
And that article is just the tip of the iceberg. There's also Exxon's funding of the infamous Heartland Institute [wikipedia.org], a "libertarian" anti-science denial shop. Heartland used to deny smoking caused cancer but unsurprisingly switched to denying global warming when their sponsorship changed. Exxon used to fund Heartland directly, but now funds them indirectly through conservative groups like the Scaife and Olin foundations.
It's hard for me to imagine how an educated person in 2011 could have ever been ignorant of how oil companies fund global warming denialism, but now there's no excuse.
Re:Carbon cycle, carbon shmycle. (Score:5, Informative)
Coal and limestone are a part of the overall carbon cycle but they are not particularly active in it on human time scales. The active parts of the carbon cycle are the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. The active part of the carbon cycle has been in relative balance for over a million years, cycling between around 190 ppmv and 300 ppmv. The last time CO2 was as high as it is now (390 ppmv) was over 15 million years ago.
Crustaceans don't use carbon dioxide directly to build their shells. They do use it indirectly though by eating other organism's that got it directly. CO2 dissolved in water becomes carbonic acid which is detrimental to shell forming organisms so it doesn't help.
The colonization of the land occurred around 550 million years ago, once atmospheric oxygen levels got high enough for the ozone layer to form and block ultraviolet light from the Sun.
Deserts are there because they lack of water. It has nothing to do with low CO2. I doubt there is any condition the Earth has been in since life colonized the land where there weren't deserts (or at least areas of low precipitation) on the planet. It's built into the physics of the atmosphere.
I don't get this assumption that increasing CO2 automatically means more plant growth. Do you have any science behind that? I know excess CO2 helps some plants to grow but not others. CO2 is not the only thing that affects plant growth. Water, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus as well as a number of others are all necessary. The current plant life has evolved under the current CO2 levels and I don't think you can definitively say that increased levels means an explosion in plant growth.
In some ways carbon is priceless (and I'm not talking about diamonds). It is the basis of all life as we know it. Without carbon we wouldn't be here. But it needs to be in its place.
Re:Yes it is! (Score:4, Informative)