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| -Lurid Crime Tales- | |
| Global Warming Zealots and More Attempts to Crush Dissent | |
| 2007-07-28 | |
| The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he will investigate a threatening letter sent by the leader of an EPA-member group, vowing to "destroy" the career of a climate skeptic. During a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday, Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, confronted EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson about the strongly-worded letter written July 13 by Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) that was sent to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). There is an irony and hypocrisy in this the Left apparently doesn't fathom. The Bushitler types are all in a lather about the encroachment of the Bushitler regime on privacy and free speech, and the coming Bush dictatorship. However, they fail to grasp that efforts to regulate Talk Radio, stifling of dissent in the Climate Change debate are just as insidious. "It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar," Mr. Eckhart wrote. "If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on." What makes this even more stupid is that Mr. Eckhart (ahem, Michael Eckhart of the Haw-vahd community, sorry.) failed to comprehend that Mr Lewis might actually make the letter public.
When Mr. Johnson confirmed that EPA is a member of ACORE, Mr. Inhofe asked if "it is appropriate to be a part of an organization that is headed up by a person who makes this statement." Late yesterday, Mr. Inhofe announced he will send letters to the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and EPA, urging them to "reconsider their membership of ACORE." As one who is in the atmospheric sciences, I can safely say that few atmospheric scientists argue against the evidence that the atmosphere has measurably warmed over the past 25-30 years. The argument is about 1st order causes. I have a real problem with anyone who states that the magnitude of the current warming is solely due to anthropomorphic CO2. Science is about discourse, and debate. It is a wholly human endeavor with a human component. The history of science is littered with the corpses of theories, and "scientific truths" that have been subsequently found to be wrong. Stifling dissent in science may be human, but it is not science. | |
| Posted by:anymouse |
| #10 > The best deterministic models we run today are generally unstable beyond 240 hours (or less depending on the situation). This is because of a phenomenon known as exponential error. Exponential error occurs in recursive systems where the data or the simulation is not 100% correct. This means that anything less than a perfect simulation and data gets gradually useless. i.e. Good in, garbage out. Now the problem is that to 100% simulate the atmosphere would require a computer of that size and could only run at the same speed as reality. Climate simulations are the most expensive random number generators in hisotry. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2007-07-28 23:33 |
| #9 phil...No, we are still emerging from the last major glacial epoch that ended ~18,000 years ago. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2007-07-28 22:47 |
| #8 The bottom line? The Earth is emerging from an Ice Age. I think you meant to say, the Earth is emerging from the Little Ice Age. If the solar cycle people are right then we are about to go back into another little ice age. One thing to note is the Little Ice Age came on very rapidly. The cooling was much faster than the (small amount of) warming over the last 30 years. We will know for sure by 2009. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2007-07-28 21:44 |
| #7 Science is about discourse, and debate. Science should also be about lab work, reading and studying. Some of the scientists in the current debate seem like they spend little time in the lab and when they do enter the lab their purpose is to create data to support their hypotheses not to test the hypotheses. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2007-07-28 21:08 |
| #6 Science is about discourse, and debate. The same is true of politics. However, in science the consequences of error rarely extend beyond personal embarrassment. In politics, they usually do. Particularly when the scientific establishment begins acting like inquisatores. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-07-28 20:57 |
| #5 Rex...30 years is the record length we as humans established as a minimum length to determine a climatological baseline. It is arbitrary. The 20-30 years I am referring to coincides roughly with the beginning of the satellite data records to establish the polar ice edges, snow cover, surface albedo, etc.. That also happens to coincide with when the northern hemisphere emerged from the last short term cold cycle (anyone remember the winter of 1976-1977?). PDO was in a cool phase from about 1890 to 1925 and 1945 to 1977. Warm phase PDO from 1925 to 1946 and from 1977 to around 2000. It's extraordinarily complex as there are other periodic atmosphere/ocean regimes on top of the PDO (e.g., variation of the solar constant, Maunder minimum, etc.). A lot of researchers are leveraging satellite data sets to make broad pronouncements about death and destruction, rising sea levels, and CO2's impact on the global heat engine...most of which is glorified BS. Anyone...and I mean anyone who says they have absolute proof based on output from a multi-decadal GCM (global circulation model) is a liar. The best deterministic models we run today are generally unstable beyond 240 hours (or less depending on the situation). The bottom line? The Earth is emerging from an Ice Age. The atmosphere-ocean system is moving towards some resonant frequency of which we have no real clue. Man is a very weak second 1st order effect, or a 2nd order effect on the Earth's climate. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2007-07-28 19:56 |
| #4 TT8048, I've been monitoring information about strange weatherstation locations at climateaudit.org and surfacestations.org and realize that Mark Twain had it right when he said: "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics". P.S. - I love it where they put the one station adjacent to the exhaust from large HVAC units (normally VERY warm) and the other in the middle of a nice asphalt parking lot. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2007-07-28 18:48 |
| #3 Sorry, had a hiccup in my train of thought. Since, at least in the US, many of the weather stations that gather historical data are now improperly positioned to get good data there is a question w/r US temp data. In the subject of dissent, most religions don't like to allow critical dissent where it might expose a weakness in their reason for faith. |
| Posted by: Throger Thains8048 2007-07-28 17:41 |
| #2 As a former materials lab tech I can say that "garbage in = garbage out" is not a theory, it's a fact. Since, at least in the US, many of the weather stations that gather historical data are now improperly positioned to get good data. No model (even if it a good one) is valid if it uses bad data. |
| Posted by: Throger Thains8048 2007-07-28 17:35 |
| #1 Heyas 'mouse. I have a question: How relevant relevant is the time frame you reference (20-30 years)? In terms of how we measure the evolution of Earth's geography and climate...should we even be worried by such a measure? How about 100 years? I personally have no real education in this field, but the time frame seems too small to make any substantive claims, of which you don't. We have observations, but what are we to make of them when compared to overall historical record of Earth's atmoshpere? And yes....I like hot weather ;] |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2007-07-28 17:23 |