Socrates Paradox

There is an excellent article by Stephen Hayward that describes in detail the entire Climategate issue here. 

Maybe I’m prejudiced, but the behavior of Gavin Schmidt and the pople that post on realclimate; http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/a-mistaken-message-from-iop/are so very similar to the behavior of the scientistists as depicted by the CRU emails that were released.  Their first approach is to shoot the messenger.  In this case, the messenger is the Institute of Physics.  The second approach is to blame it on BIG OIL.  They also viciously attack any poster that is the least critical of them.  Thirdly, they deny that there was any attempt to withhold data, code or methods.

I am presenting a work-in-progress of IPCC AR4 WG3 Chapter 3, Section 3.2 Changes in Surface Climate: Temperatures. The main page is a PDF of Section 3.2 of the IPCC report with links to PDF files of the supporting documentation.  I am looking for validation of the temperature records.  So far, all I see is a lot of peer-reviewed literature on the theory and methodology, but nothing that validates the execution and quality of the temperature record.  There is a lot of interesting information in these papers.  Please comment on interesting things that you may find.  To get to the documents, click here.

This is a work in progress.  I still have many papers to find.  I also have a problem in that the home document is PDF and most of the papers are PDF.  What is happening is when you link to another PDF, the home document is closed.  Then to return, it has to reload the home document, and that is taking all too long.  If anyone knows how to fix it, please let me know.  In the meantime, if I can find the papers in html format, I will replace the existing PDF with HTML.

Dr Phillip Stott puts forward his eloquent arguments in his blog, “Clamour of The Times” 

http://web.me.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2010/1/30_Global_Warming%3A_the_Collapse_of_a_Grand_Narrative.html

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“Duh, I never heard that before” is an argument from ignorance.  Just because a person is ignorant of something is not evidence that it is not true.  Primitive religions created gods to explain the unknown, but that logic is rejected by modern theologians because as knowledge is expanded, the god of the unknowns is diminished.  Today, the Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates, along with the IPCC, Science Magazine and Nature have taken the argument from ignorance to new heights, with the help of computer models.  In a recent Nature Magazine article, “The real holes in climate science”, Quirin Schiermier states, “Such holes do not undermine the fundamental conclusion that humans are warming the climate, which is based on the extreme rate of the twentieth-century temperature changes and the inability of climate models to simulate such warming without including the role of greenhouse-gas pollution.”  (more…)

Everyone is missing the point on climate models.  They can only replicate PAST climate.  They have been calibrated on the solid records available from the most impeccable sources, CRU, GISS and CDRC.  Their accuracy is impeccable in predicting known results.  But as Yogi Berra said, “predicting is hard, especially about the future.”  

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The debate is not over.  The AGW advocates would have you believe that the debate is over and the science is settled.  They refuse to debate the science, refuse to release data for replication, attempt to corrupt the peer-review process to suppress opposing scientists and vilify the “climate change denialist fringe,” to quote a Nature Magazine editorial. (more…)

In a significant departure from past policy, a scientist recognized the existence of natural variability in climate in explaining the current cold weather.  Past events, such as the unusually hot year in 1998 and hurricane Katrina have been explained as not natural, but the result of Anthropogenic Global Warming.  But in a recent AP article, “Experts: Cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming” Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said “It’s part of natural variability,”

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As an engineer, I found that, unlike scientists, I had to deal with the real world.  Nature can be very cruel and humiliating.  I had to deal with inconvenient things, such as friction, tolerances and technological capabilities.  Now scientists are able to take temperature measurements from around the world over a hundred years and calculate that the earth had warmed by one degree. (more…)

The Barrett Bellamy Climate website gives an excellent scientific description of most aspects of climate change.  On the page for skeptics, it defines 4 types of skepticism of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). They are as follows:

(i)                  informed science

(ii)                misunderstanding of science

(iii)               distortions of science or deliberate misunderstanding

(iv)              incredulity 

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