[Vision2020] Vision2020 "Witch-Hunt?"

Fri Aug 26 11:07:57 PDT 2011

I'm guessing that this is a "hot-button" issue for you.

Please be patient, and I will respond with a few reasons why I think that a couple of the most prominent climate scientists should not be fully trusted when I have the time to get everything together so I can lay it out for you in an email.

Paul

________________________________
From: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
To: Rosemary Huskey <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com>
Cc: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>; A B <sunshinydays55 at yahoo.com>; vision2020 at moscow.com
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 10:58 AM
Subject: Vision2020 "Witch-Hunt?"

An example of a "witch-hunt" on Vision2020 is the extreme absurd claim
there is international widespread incompetence or political
manipulation of climate science among thousands of scientists in
numerous scientific organizations around the globe, to generate the
international scientific consensus that human impacts on climate are
profound, and increasing as we continue to increase atmospheric CO2
levels and other human impacts.

Paul Rumelhart godshatter at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 25 18:04:41 PDT 2011 wrote:

http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2011-August/077920.html

"Maybe we should wait until we have something we
know we should be angry about before we start venting about it."
---------
Implying scientists are censoring journals or hiding data based on
criminally hacked and possibly altered private emails, before a full
independent investigation, is a good example of not following the
advice given above, an example of which be read at the following
Vision2020 post: [Vision2020] Hacked Climate Reseach Unit E-mails:
1,092 Responses to “The CRU hack”
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2009-November/067469.html
---------
"...wait until we have something we know we should be angry about..." ?????

The author or this sage advice has refused to accept that the
scientists he quoted on Vision2020 from the email hack of the Climatic
Research Unit of East Anglia University in the UK, have been
investigated and cleared of any significant misconduct, as the
following two sources indicate:

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2011/08/24/michael_mann_climategate_.aspx

"The final investigation report from the National Science Foundation,
published on Aug. 15, confirmed the initial investigation results from
a Penn State panel also investigating Mann’s research, finding that
“there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann,”
according to the document."

http://www.pewclimate.org/blog/gulledgej/sixth-independent-investigation-clears-climategate-scientists

"In the course of 2010, five investigations—three in the U.K. and two
in the United States—cleared scientists working for the CRU and an
American scientist working at Penn State University of any scientific
wrongdoing.

That said, in my experience climate science is already more open and
transparent than most other scientific fields, with gobs of data
publicly available and many assessment reports and other climate
science products intended specifically for public consumption
(examples: here, here, here). No other field I can think of has been
laid so bare to public scrutiny."

--------------------
His witch-hunt has continued, with errors and misunderstandings
regarding climate science, repeated over and over, coupled with a
refusal to admit mistakes and misrepresentations of the science on
this subject, when they are clearly pointed out, as can be read in my
response on Vision2020 below:

http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2011-July/077266.html

[Vision2020] Climate & Science

On 7/13/11, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I find it just as frightening that *any* criticism of climate scientists
> is seen as a statement that there is a "paranoid extreme conspiracy".  I
> have good reasons for not trusting some of the major figures in climate
> science.  Mann, for example, and his "hockey stick" graph.
>

Climate scientists criticize each other every day, and I have never
observed anyone behaving as though any criticism of climate scientists
implies a "paranoid extreme conspiracy."

The paranoid extreme conspiracy mentality is expressed by those who
think the entire international field of climate science is involved in
a deliberate hoax to promote anthropogenic climate change as a serious
problem, aimed at a political or economic agenda.  Many of those who
obsess on the email hack from the Climatic Research Unit from EAU in
the UK express this mentality.

The very implication you are suggesting, that there is to any
significant degree in the world of science, or in media or Internet or
any form of public discourse, a level of censur occuring that attacks
any criticism of climate scientists as an expression of paranoia, is
itself an example of paranoia!

> Climate science is a young field.  The first actual degree offered in
> climatology was a BS in climatology offered by the University of South
> Queensland in Australia with the first enrollments in the degree in
> 2001.  I think it's a bit soon in a field that looks at time spans of
> 30+ years to say that we've pretty much concluded what the answers are.
>

For one thing, study of climate science is often called meteorology.
Degrees in meteorology have been offered for decades, though I don't
know when the first one was offered.  Thus some scientific
organizations focusing on climate are the World Meteorological
Organization and the American Meteorological Society.

If you examine the degress of some prominent climate scientists who
have been publishing in the field for decades, you won't find
"climatology" as a degree title: MIT's Professor of Meteorology
Richard Lindzen, a very often quoted and interviewed skeptic of a high
value for climate sensitivity (i.e. human sourced CO2 in the
atmosphere has a limited impact), has degrees in physics and math:
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/CV.pdf

NASA's climate scientist James Hansen, who in his book "Storms of My
Grandchildren" ( http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/ ) called
Lindzen the "dean" of anthropogenic climate warming skeptics, has
degrees in physics, math and astronomy:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html

Climate science has been a major field of scientific study for over
100 years, at least since Nobel winner Arrhenius in 1896, sometimes
referenced as publishing the first serious attempt to quantify climate
sensitivity.  Here is long list of published scientific studies of
climate sensitivity, from 1896 to past 2006:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
Levenson in detail addresses the often heard comment that climate
models are untestable or unreliable here:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html

I recall you once wrote on Vision2020 Levenson's climate sensitivity
list reveals climate sensitivity to be "all over the board."  Yet when
I responded that in fact all the results show temperature increases,
that none show temperature decreases from negative feedbacks that
overcome the radiative forcing of atmospheric CO2, so therefore these
results are not "all over the board," you ignored this rather
compelling fact.

I dispute that climate science it is a "young" science, as is often
stated, to undermine the credibility of climate predictions.  It could
be argued modern genetics is a younger science, given DNA was not
fully unraveled till the 1950s, yet we trust DNA evidence in court.

Climate science has researched time scales of millions of years of
Earths history, as anyone studying the subject knows, as revealed
here: "Climate Change: Evidence from the Geological Record"
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climatechange

The peer reviewed publication in this field are vast.  Consider just
one, GFDL climate scientist Manabe's publication record, 164
publications, from 1955 to 2011, counting articles now "in press."
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/results.php  Manabe is well know
for publishing in 1980 what is sometimes considered the first serious
discussion of "polar amplification": Manabe, Syukuro, and Ronald J
Stouffer, 1980: Sensitivity of a global climate model to an increase
of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical
Research, 85(C10), 5529-5554. available in full (26 pages pdf) free
here: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm8001.pdf

While on the subject of meteorology, read the statements on human
influenced climate change from the AMS and WMO:

http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html

How will climate change in the future?

There will be inevitable climate changes from the greenhouse gases
already added to the Earth system. Their effect is delayed several
decades because the thermal inertia of the oceans ensures that the
warming lags behind the driving forcing.  For the next several decades
there is a clear consensus on projected warming rates from human
influences among different models and different emission scenarios.
----------------------
http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/causes_of_climate_change.php

Since the industrial revolution, human activity has increased the
amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (shown in the graph to
the right). The increased amount of gases which absorb heat, has
directly lead to more heat being retained in the atmosphere and thus
an increase in global average surface temperatures. This change in
temperature is known as global warming. The increase in temperature is
also leading to other effects on the climate system. Together these
affects are known as anthropogenic (human caused) climate change.

> There may indeed be a well funded, politically supported junk science
> agenda, I wouldn't know.  That's not where I get my info.

How many times have you posted to Vision2020 defenses of junk climate
science websites and articles?  More times than I can count...

I''ll reference one notable example, a website you have referenced
numerous times.

National Snow Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze called Anthony
Watt's junk climate science website "Watts Up With That" an expresion
of "breathtaking ignorance."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/realpolitic/worlds-oceans-warmest-on-_n_289210_31196131.html

Yet you vigorously defended Watt's confirmation bias filtered
statements on Arctic sea ice extent predictions for 2010 from "Watts
Up With That," with profanity laced responses, revealed in the
following Vision2020 posts from June and July 2010:
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2010-June/070679.html
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2010-July/070799.html

The final Arctic sea ice extent for 2010 refuted Watt's scientifically
irresponsible spring predictions, a result you never followed up on
regarding our discussion of Watt's confirmation bias filter.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 8/25/11, Rosemary Huskey <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com> wrote:
> Paul,
> Please help us to understand what you mean by "witch hunts" and "over
> reactions."
>
>
> Rose Huskey
>
>
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