ClimateGate busts things wide open

It is well understood, for example, that peer review cannot guarantee that what is published is ‘correct’.

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

WBU ALUM wrote:Another iceberg. This time, on the port side.

Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics

“Appeal to their own authority” is a fairly elegant way of pointing out the hubris in AGW advocates who declared the science “settled” and began to brand everyone who questioned it as “deniers.” Stephen Dinan reports that Stanford researcher Stephen Schneider accused Senator James Inhofe of “McCarthyesque” attacks for urging a criminal investigation into potential fraud in the AGW movement. Schneider must have missed the calls from AGW advocates to have any weatherman who expressed doubt about global warming to be decertified as meteorologists, or questioning the patriotism of Americans who dare to question the sputtering consensus. Nothing McCarthyesque about that, is there?

“Appeal to their own authority” is a fairly elegant way of pointing out the hubris in AGW advocates who declared the science “settled” and began to brand everyone who questioned it as “deniers.” Stephen Dinan reports that Stanford researcher Stephen Schneider accused Senator James Inhofe of “McCarthyesque” attacks for urging a criminal investigation into potential fraud in the AGW movement. Schneider must have missed the calls from AGW advocates to have any weatherman who expressed doubt about global warming to be decertified as meteorologists, or questioning the patriotism of Americans who dare to question the sputtering consensus. Nothing McCarthyesque about that, is there?

ronan01 wrote:In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” – Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day, 1970

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." – Barry Commoner (Washington University), Earth Day, 1970

People complain that we are buying — importing from the Middle East — oil and gas. And then they find out that we have it all right here. We don’t have to do that. If their argument there is “Well, we don’t want to use oil and gas because we think it pollutes” — which it doesn’t — but if that’s their argument, then why are we willing to import it from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East?

Revelations from his hacked emails have supported a suspicion that he is making a case rather than reporting the evidence. The price tag on the case he is making runs to trillions, so the stakes are high.

In that light, it doesn't look good that his unit has resisted requests to release their data, methodologies, their codes and programmes for general inspection. It's a big Trust Me, a committee member observed.

"I'm a scientist," Labour's Graham Stringer said. "If I want to check your results, I can't."

Dr Jones fiddled with that allegation (he's not without Westminster talent) but the committee didn't look persuaded. His reply to a request for information was quoted: "Why should I make data available to you when you only want to find something wrong with it?" Stringer concluded: "That is unscientific!"

Climate change human link evidence 'stronger'
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News


A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.

In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.

Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."



The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.

It's important to communicate to people what the science is showing
Dr Peter Stott

"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."