Climategate II? Scientific community accused of muzzling dissent on global warming

Aaah...the stench of:


"anyone who disagrees with 'my side' is an idiot".

Kind of interesting to see who does the attacking. If something is the truth - then why must people attack to try and drive their points home? Truth is universal, undeniable. Mankind has been wrong very often in our history, especially with 'scientific knowledge' - we continue to be wrong and will in the future be wrong some more. Get used to it.

What may be thought to be 'right' today, may be found 'wrong' later.

Being condescending and on the attack (over something I'm sure most attackers have little to no study on a particular matter, merely spewing pre-made charts, graphs and articles, that sometimes defy logic in the materials themselves), just makes those who do it, look like the hind-quarters of a mule.

What happened to discussion? Out the window with maturity? Sad times, sad times.

a reply to: BlackboxInquiry

Truth is a human concept. It is only undeniable on a purely conceptual level.

Scientific knowledge is not "wrong", or "right", it is constantly updating. As things stand, an overwhelming majority of climatologists say that mankind is responsible for climate change. Lets say you visit 10 doctors. Nine tell you that you have cancer. One says you're fine. Maybe that lonely dude is "right", and the others are all "wrong". Now try and make me believe that you're not going to get an appointment with a specialist...

You want discussion ? Well thing is there is no neutral ground on this particular issue. Because deniers and big energy will continue to frack up the planet while we talk. That's like trying to convince someone that murder is wrong, while they just walk around shooting random people in the head. And to be honest, it's probably even more frustrating.

a reply to: Ismail

No one wants the truth in this case. Only a version of it that best fits what they want to believe.

Thing is, that one day people will wake up to find the real truth all around them.

Better late than never I suppose.

originally posted by: Spiramirabilis
a reply to: beezzer

So it is yours (and others) contention that CO2 is being deliberately pumped into the environment in order to affect climate change?

c'mon Beez - is that even a real question?

:-)

I'll give you more credit than you apparently give yourself

All we've accomplished is called progress - we are very clever beasties after all

Some of the results of our cleverness are causing us harm. We can come up with solutions to our problems if we face them head on. If - we quit playing games and give up the politics and greed...this is a real problem - not a work of fiction

Why does everything have to be part of some devious, nefarious plan?

(I mean of course - outside of ATS)

:-)

Jut trying to put things in perspective, trying to keep an open mind, and exercise critical thinking.

a reply to: Kali74

Oh, right, because the GW crowd never, ever censors the opposition or makes things up, right?

They're Not Melting: 87% of Himalayan Glaciers Are ‘Stable’

Scientists in cover-up of "damaging" climate view

When scientists lie

New Global Warming Report: Scientists Lied to Australian Parliament

Skeptical Scientists Debunk White House Global Warming Report

Preachers of Deception: Global warming alarmists are feeding us lies

NASA Scientist may have lied about “Global Warming” for Money and Fame (Now act Surprised)

Global Warming: The BIGGEST LIE Exposed

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

So 13% of Himalayan Glaciers are melting and fracturing... why?

Your second link is the same story as the OP.

Tony Abbott (Rupert Murdoch's puppet PM) is leading a witch hunt on Climate Science, cutting 90% of funding... I'm not sure how we're supposed to believe anything coming from Australia (no offense Aussies) for the foreseeable future.

I have to get ready for work, I'll add more later.

I think all climate-change deniers should be forcibly moved, and live in Beijing, China, to "experience" the joys of living and breathing all of the man-made pollution...and bring your kids!!....they will equally enjoy the polluted way of life, that the deniers say is....... "just a part of the natural climate cycle"

a reply to: jimmyx

If I changed just a few words of that statement, and I mean literally, cut/paste no more than a few words without even rearranging sentences......It would fit for exactly what was said by some during the 1930's.

It's not often I get an honest to god chill from something I read online, but the realization that I've been hearing variations of that in the media for a short time now (ahead of the administrations BIG BIG new regulatory decrees coming next month, but no relation, of course) gives me real pause to wonder just what we're watching.

Disagreement has turned to derision and that's become something akin to real hatred. Not here perhaps, but even MSM is showing exchanges of real passionate hostility from people who normally can't spell the word sincere off a teleprompter.

The Times has manufactured an unfounded climate change conspiracy theory

Here we go again. The latest IPCC report, the US National Climate Assessment report, and a report published by US military researchers all recently warned us yet again about the risks associated with human-caused climate change. While the planet continues to warm, ice continues to melt, and sea levels continue to rise, the conservative media are trying to distract everyone from these scientific realities with a shiny quarter named Lennart Bengtsson.

Bengtsson is a meteorologist at the University of Reading, who recently decided to join a charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF is known for downplaying the risks posed by human-caused global warming with shoddy scientific arguments, then arguing against taking any meaningful action to address the problem.

The GWPF has called the IPCC a "deeply discredited organisation" and worse, and has accused climate scientists of being delusional or liars. The group also recently set up a new campaigning arm, which would be free from charity regulations requiring that any information they put out is fair and as accurate as possible.

Thus it was not surprising when Bengtsson's scientific colleagues were unhappy with him joining this organization. Some of those colleagues allegedly told Bengtsson that they did not want to publish research with him due to his association with this political group, which seems entirely understandable. However, in response to these alleged reactions from his colleagues (Bengtsson did not respond to requests for additional details), Bengtsson wrote in his resignation letter to the GWPF,

"I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy."
To be clear, this situation bears no resemblance to McCarthyism in the United States, which involved aggressive government investigations and questioning of people suspected of having ties to Communism. For more accurate parallels in climate science today, look instead at Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's witch-hunt of Michael Mann or the Climategate inquiries directed at Phil Jones. A few colleagues withdrawing support and co-authorship with Bengtsson pales in comparison.

A few days later, Bengtsson told Rupert Murdoch's The Times that a peer-reviewer comment recommending rejection of a paper he co-authored mentioned how the 'skeptic' media would react to the study. The Murdoch media and other conservatively biased news outlets went berserk, with stories in Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Mail Online, The Telegraph, The Times again, The Mail on Sunday, The Australian, and Drudge, inventing conspiracy theories involving censorship of 'inconvenient research'.
Bengtsson's submitted paper had made the case that the Earth's climate sensitivity to the increased greenhouse effect is relatively low by comparing the results of several previous studies, but had not made the case well. The journal in question, Environmental Research Letterspublished the full comments from the reviewer in question, showing that the recommendation to reject the paper was because,

"The overall innovation of the manuscript is very low ... The paper does not make any significant attempt at explaining or understanding the differences, it rather puts out a very simplistic negative message giving at least the implicit impression of "errors" being made within and between these assessments,"

Comments from a second reviewer were even more brutal. This is precisely the purpose of peer-review – to filter out papers that aren't sufficiently accurate or don't add anything significant to our scientific understanding. Environmental Research Letters is a high-quality scientific journal with a 65% rejection rate. For examples of innovative research in this area, see our discussions of recent papers by NASA'sDrew Shindell and Texas A&M's Kummer & Dessler.

a reply to: Kali74

Glaciers melt and grow as part of their normal processes. This isn't anything new. If the world was so much warmer, most of them would be melting, and that simply isn't the case. Remember all that ice causing the polar bears problems this past winter? Doesn't seem like a "warming" problem to me!

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

If 13% of the glaciers are being noted as melting, it's not because they are going through normal seasonal melt and refreeze it's because they are actually melting as in disappearing forever.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) (PDF link available)

Executive Summary
This report provides a comprehensive account of the status of glaciers of Nepal in approximately 1980, 1990,
2000, and 2010 based on a semi-automatic standardized analysis of satellite images with post-processing database
management in ArcGIS. The methodology is an improved version of methods developed by global initiatives like the
World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS), and GlobGlacier.
The customized methodology of semi-automatic glacier mapping provides a rapid delivery of glacier attributes. The
semi-automatically derived glacier outlines from 2010 were overlain separately on the images used to approximate
1980, 1990, and 2000, and the glacier outlines were modified manually for the respective years and used for
change analysis. Clean-ice and debris-covered glaciers were mapped separately for 2010 to support studies of
water resources assessment and climate change impact. In an additional case study, glacier outlines for the four
decades in the Langtang sub-basin in central Nepal and Imja sub-basin in eastern Nepal were analysed and
compared with decadal temperature change.

The inventory is a much-needed follow up to the inventory of glaciers and glacial lakes in Nepal published in 2001,
which used a variety of data sources with considerable temporal differences, including Indian Survey topographic
maps (1962–1975), aerial photos (1957–1959), and field survey findings, and must thus be considered essentially
as indicative. The present single country inventory complements the survey published in 2011 of glaciers in the
individual river basins of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which was based on data from a single source (Landsat
images) with a short temporal range (2005±3 years) and also analysed semi-automatically.

The inventory for Nepal was supplemented by a case study in Langtang valley in central Nepal and Imja valley
in eastern Nepal showing the changes over 30 years in individual glaciers. The changes were compared with the
changes in temperature recorded at nearby hydrometeorological stations; the loss of glacier area was paralleled
by a steady increase in average annual temperature, and especially average minimum temperature. Changes in
rainfall patterns over 20 years were also analysed.

The results provide information on the change in glacial extent over the past decade and quantitative data to
support discussion of climate change impacts in the Nepal Himalayas. The major findings were as follows:

In 2010, a total of 3,808 glaciers were identified with a total area of 3,902km2 and estimated ice reserves of 312km3. The average area of individual glaciers was 1km2. The Ngojumba glacier in the Dudh Koshi sub-basin was the largest single glacier with an area of 79 km2.

About 90% of the glacier area lay between 4,500 and 6,500masl; with 65% between 5,000 and 6,000masl.

The contribution of estimated ice reserves is higher for a large glacier than for the same cumulative area from
a number of smaller ones. Thus the estimated ice reserves were higher in basins with larger glaciers and larger
glaciers are the most important reserves of freshwater.

The total glacier area decreased by 24% between 1977 and 2010, and the estimated ice reserves by 29%
(129km3). The number of glaciers increased by 11%, a result of fragmentation following shrinkage. The lowest
losses of glacier area (and in some cases gains) were observed from glaciers with a north or northwest aspect (of
which there were very few) and slopes of less than 20°. Mountain basin type and valley glaciers also showed a lower
proportional loss of area.

The glaciers receded on average by 38km2 per year. The rate of loss of glacial area between ~1980 and 1990 was almost twice that in the subsequent two decades (1990–2000 and 2000–2010). Further study is needed to determine whether this reflects a slowing in the rate of change or an anomalous situation in the first period.

The average annual mean temperature in the Langtang and Imja (Khumbu) sub-basins rose at an average rate of
0.12°C/year and 0.09°C/year, respectively, between 1988 and 2008. Moving average analysis showed that the
rate of increase in average mean minimum temperature was significant and higher than the increase in average
mean maximum temperature.

a reply to: Kali74

No, it isn't. It's because some melt some years, and others grow. If all were melting, you might have a leg to stand on. They aren't. The ones that melt one year will grow another year. That's how it works, and how it's always worked.

a reply to: Kali74

There is a clear discouragement of skepticism in the field. News outlets from both sides are allowed to blow BS nonsense up everyone's behinds, but within the bureaucracy dissent is not tolerated.

The climatologists even provide the data that "extreme" weather and droughts are within historical ranges and that their fear is that increasing temperatures could/may make things worse.

The data for the US shows that strong storms (and those making landfall) are not acting erratically, the droughts are essentially what is predicted from historical precedent, and wild fires are essentially the same (if not slightly down). The scientists say maybe and could and the media blow it out of proportion which leads to threads like these.

The IPCC admits they cannot tell weather cloud coverage is a net positive or negative . . . . how can you factor such an unknown into models and expect realistic results. The El Nino and La nina used to be blamed for erratic weather and the current models cannot account for them either.

The policy seems to be 'fake it until you make it.'

I don't care how many lamina and pyramidions you can calculate the flux for if your force vector is inaccurate, admittedly so by the IPCC, then you should make that very clear instead of short blurbs in the CMIP reports.


-FBB

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

So just completely ignore the link I provided you?
Cool.

a reply to: FriedBabelBroccoli

but within the bureaucracy dissent is not tolerated.

Within the bureaucracy? Are you referring to the entire body of science? Dissent is quite tolerated but if you can't adequately back up your words with data then you are rightly dissented against. Those poor bullied pseudo-scientists...

as to the original OP....I think it's about damn time the scientific community "muzzle" these pseudo-scientists...I think you need to call BS when you hear it, and not give them credibility. this didn't start in the last couple of years, this denial of man-made climate change has been going on for decades. scientific study requires no political agenda, it requires evidence, testing, and peer-review. there are plenty of scientists that take great joy in proving their colleagues wrong, they don't need outside money or political influences to do that.
......to prove that their company does not pollute, the owners and senior execs children should live and play beside the factories....how about the children of DUKE ENERGY owners, drink from the same river water where DUKE dumped their pollution. how about the children of EXXON CORP. owners live right in the middle of a fracking site.