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What you are calling "racism" is not actually the same as the definition of racism. It would be better described as race neutrality, or something along those lines.

At 2/5/10 03:53 PM, poxpower wrote:

Climategate is a PERFECT example of it happening right before our eyes. They took it and spun it as some amazing conspiracy that FINALLY WAS EXPOSED!! But it's all bullshit, there's nothing that came from it as far as the science on global warming goes. It was at BEST a ethics violation. AT BEST. And it's very debatable if it even was.

What was a violation was hacking into the email accounts.

An ethics violation among people who want to enact a massive piece of public policy isn't trivial. In any case, I think that the alarmists were really the people who tried to spin the emails to the fullest degree.

Anti-global warming is not science-based, it's a political movement backed by lawyers and lobbyists.
It's FOX news level bullshit.

This is just a ridiculous accusation akin to claiming that global warming is a political movement backed by ideological statists who want to raise government spending. Accusing "lawyers" doesn't even make any sense. Isn't the right always trying to reduce excessive legal spending with things like tort reform?

At 1/29/10 02:17 AM, Coherent wrote: Social Liberalism to be specific. I was talking with a conservative friend of mine and he was going on his usual rant about how the american school system has a liberal slant. I agree with this to an extent, but today I had a different idea. Have you ever considered that liberalism is more widely accepted by college proffesor and students because liberalism is simply more compatible with reality?

Nah, I think that professors are more left-leaning because they hate the system. They see themselves as being at the top of their field, well respected in academic circles, and making less money than the managers at Wal Mart (well, this is true of adjuncts in most humanities, probably not tenured professors though). It annoys them that society gives them less money and less respect than their own little social circles.

After all, liberals aren't the one claiming "God did it!" is the best and most useful scientific explanation for everything. Liberals aren't claiming extremely trivial benign things like homosexuality are "immoral" and "evil".

Most conservatives think this either.

A recent poll by the pew research center found that 52% of all scientists identify themselves as "liberal" while only 9% identify themselves as "conservatives" (an even lesser 6% identified themselves as republicans) (Source: http://people-press.org/report/528/) So now it would seem that not only are those more exposed to higher education identifying themselves as liberals, but the majority of scientists are as well?

One issue here is that in academia, liberal means "libertarian" more than it means "leftist". In any case, people with BS degrees are more conservative than average. Those with more than a BS or no higher education at all are more liberal.

Of course, none of this objectively proves that liberalism is closer to reality, but it certainly worth considering and discussing. It certainly seems from my perspective that conservatives in this country have taken to arguing based on their own personal moralitys (or other biases), rather than arguing upon logic in reason.

Just my 2 cents

I think that morality and reason go hand in hand.

At 1/29/10 08:53 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

This isn't the 1900s. There's a WTO now, that is the organism that approves tariff increases. Even if the US would ignore what an international organism says (which is the rule rather than the exception), other countries would surely retaliate with similar moves, leaving the tariffs completely inefficient (like it did happen in the 1900s).

Depends on what your goal is. If the goal is to make the US more economically self sufficient, then retaliatory tarrifs aren't a problem.

At 1/13/10 12:55 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

He's not a dictator, and he has been democratically elected, several times, in clean elections.
Actually, there WAS a coup, AGAINST him, which was US-supported.
So you're basically waaaaaaaaaaay off.

I think that democracy is more than two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner, or in Chavez's case 60% of the population deciding that it wants to steal from the other 40%.

At 12/5/09 07:59 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: I know it won't happen, but can someone give a justification for state-recognised marriages at all??

Sure. Laws are necessary obligations for civil society and external incentives to those obligations. The institution of monogamy is necessary for a civil society and the state is able to incentivize it.

At 1/15/10 02:06 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: 1. The US is in massive debt and will struggle to support itself financially in the near future. What it definitely doesn't need at the moment (or at all, mind you) is to be accepting responsibility for the poorest nation in the Americas.

2. To claim that economic benefits could be made for the US is simply absurd. America produces more in the first eight hours of January the first than Haiti does in an entire year. The only people that might benefit is the Haitians, which is super cool and everything, but the US can really not afford to be putting itself in this sort of position (nor do they do they have any responsibility to do so).

this is not to say I support the Iraq war or anything of a similar nature currently engaged in by the US

I dunno if you're looking at this the right way. The Haitans wouldn't be able to pay very much in taxes but they also probably wouldn't use as much federal money as other states. Annexing Haiti would hurt the lower middle class and would benefit the upper class (which would acquire cheap labor).

At 12/31/09 03:14 PM, puddinN64 wrote: So, I was watching Inglorious Bastards today and I noticed in the bonus section that there was a Japanese trailer for the movie. This struck me, since I didn't expect it to be there and especially since Japan has had some pretty ugly ties with the Axis Powers.

So, what I was wondering is how Japan feels about Nazi Germany following their defeat in World War II. Obviously, they aren't buddies with Germany anymore, but how do they feel about Germany's role in the war, with the holocaust and brutality used by them. Are they completely horrified or do they just try to ignore it and move on?

This is an interesting question. What do the Americans and British think about allying with the Soviet Union (who were, in due time, far more destructive than Nazi Germany)?

At 12/12/09 04:33 PM, lapis wrote:

I mean, it's probably best to first clearly define what you mean by "the West", or at least split up the different aspects of the "the West" before a cogent discussion about the spread and/or decay of its influence can take place.

This is a superb point. People used to tag Japan onto their definition of the west, and as economic reform takes hold, people ought to start including South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. Sometimes people will use "North" to refer to the developed countries and "South" to refer to the undeveloped ones.

At 12/19/09 03:53 PM, Elfer wrote:

At 12/19/09 03:17 PM, Al6200 wrote: I agree with the point that has been made here that Global Warming advocates aren't just acting in their own monetary self interest. Even if global warming manages to trick significant numbers of people, the scientists themselves won't be all that wealthy. I think it's more likely that they just want to feel important and valuable.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty unlikely that an entire branch of science is populated by people who want to feel important and valuable by falsifying research.

Why? Ask any baptist preacher, and they'll tell you that God exists and that the events described in Revelations are going to happen. I think that there is enough psychological pull behind doomsday theories that significant numbers of people are willing to distort their faculties of reason.

I'm pretty sure that most cultures have some sort of an end-of-the-world myth. When Christianity was the religion of the elites, they had the "Revelations" myth, but now that the nation's intellectuals have become atheists, they've turned to global warming as their new Armageddon.

Why do people need to believe that the world might soon end? Perhaps they want to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions? Perhaps they want to create an "indulgence" system whereby they can free themselves from their sense of guilt?

I agree with the point that has been made here that Global Warming advocates aren't just acting in their own monetary self interest. Even if global warming manages to trick significant numbers of people, the scientists themselves won't be all that wealthy. I think it's more likely that they just want to feel important and valuable.

At 12/2/09 08:24 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

Sure, the men broke federal crimes and deserved to be arrested. However, funny how people, not least the mainstream media who have an undeniably huge hard on for Obama, were quiet when hundreds and hundreds of Bush detractors made explicit and very real threats against Bush's life, or at the very least claimed that he deserved to die, like the what happened in the second of the above links.

That's a great point, and I'm surprised that I completely overlooked it when I first saw the statistic. I guess I assumed that they had very strict rules on what constituted a threat, and thus had little room for bias. But it is possible that the bias has good intentions. The Secret Service thinks that Obama is more threatened, so they're less cautious in taking steps to protect him. This of course makes any attempt to use their actions as evidence tautological.

It doesn't tell us anything about the opposition to Obama, it just tells us information about those who want to kill Obama.

At 12/2/09 12:09 AM, Christopherr wrote:

At 12/1/09 11:59 PM, reviewer-general wrote: Obviously, ideally I'd prefer everyone to have such a mindset. What are some other ways that we as society could go about affecting such a responsibility that the Dalai Lama speaks of?

Raising our kids right. All the new parenting techniques are fucking up our future generations to be more xenophobic and overly cautious of people strange to them. I mean, we don't let our children play unsupervised, we don't let them trick-or-treat unsupervised, we teach them all about "stranger danger." It's breeding a nation of cowards, and it takes some courage and initiative to help others.

Seconded. I fear that any attempt at a solution, however, would fall along ideological lines. Why are kids too xenophobic?

A: Our country has become unsafe, and thus kids cannot afford to trust strangers
A1: The country is unsafe because liberals are soft on crimes and its causes.
A2: The country is unsafe because we don't spend enough on education and social services.

B: Our culture is backwards and possibly racist, and frightens kids to achieves it own ends.
B1: The liberals are scaring the children.
B2: The conservatives are scaring the children.

As you can see all of these explanations are ideologically charged and divisive, and are already being used in political talking points.

Unfortunately, everyone is more than willing to spend money while only few are willing to spend real effort.

For an explanation of why our culture is xenophobic, I would look towards Charles Murray's concept of cognitive classes. In today's system, the youth live together, until they are sorted into cognitive classes where they live and work with people who are similar to them. Traditionally, a person might live with the same group their entire lives, across different cognitive and economic classes. Today, however, these common bonds of community are largely broken.

At 11/27/09 08:41 PM, JoS wrote: The US political system is set up to counter balance the negatives of a representative democracy. In a representive democracy you still have the vulnerability of mob rule, as people have pointed out, if the representatives do not do what the people want they wont be around very long. This is where the senate comes into play, since they represent a much large constituency they are less prone to influence by popularity.

the Senates original purpose was to counter balance the House, prevent the Representatives who were mostly from low to middle class from hijacking the country from the upper class who made up the senate.

This is an astute point that I hadn't thought of. If I recall correctly, senators were originally appointed by governors, making it a virtual guarantee that they represent the upper classes.

At 11/24/09 11:42 PM, Elfer wrote:

I'd like to place a bet now though that if any wrongdoing is uncovered, it will be irregularities pertaining to FOIA requests, and not the actual research itself. That sort of thing is the only stuff I've seen in the emails that seems truly suspect.

For a group that receives federal funding, problems with transparency are very serious. The United States's major cable news network, Fox News (it gets a lot of flack, but that naturally goes along with being the most popular), gives this significant coverage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=429xoDtqS -A

Gay Marriage should not be decided by popular referendum. Our government is deliberately set up as a democratic republic, and not a pure democracy, to avoid the dangers and risks that are posed by leaving all decisions to a popular vote that are commonly described as "mob rule". Popular referendums to ban gay marriage are built upon two of the major flaws in pure democracy: that the majority will use their votes to cause unjustified harms to minority rights and that the public will be swayed to vote upon issues that they do not appreciate.

The public is unfortunately inclined to vote to cause an unecessary harm to minorities that lack the political clout to protect their rights. Thus, the legislature needs to use its authority to create sound policy that does not simply harm minorities. While it is true that legislators are elected democratically, it is also true that they are elected for both their ability to make sound decisions and for their policy positions. The public will want to elect legislators who are fair, so that they will not the run the risk of their own group being abused, but might not make such a connection when voting in referendums.

Legislators spend great amounts of time studying policy issues and listening to the opinions of experts. The public, however, often forms their opinions without understanding the issue completely. To make a sound decision about gay marriage, one should understand the legal, historical, and cultural dimensions of both homosexuality and the definition of marriage. I doubt that the average person voting in a referendum has done that.

So far, it seems like turning gay marriage over to referendums is a solid opposition strategy - but I don't want minorities to lose their rights to a majority that is self interested and does not fully appreciate the issues, and if it does happen then I think it will be kind of sad.

"Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails"

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/
taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml

I think that this is a sound idea. Whether or not wrongdoing occurred, scientists receiving public funds should be more transparent and have greater scrutiny.

I think that the death penalty should be reserved for those who would pose a serious harm from within the prison system. In any case I think that there are really two purposes for incarcerating criminals:

1. Public safety. I.e, if a person is in prison then they are not on the street, doing what they were originally arrested for.

2. Punishment. There is a deterrent for those who would commit crimes in the future.

I think that life inprisonment is a superior form of punishment, because it can be made to be sufficiently harsh and because it can be appealed based on evidence that emerges over time. In general it is also sufficient for the protection of public safety.

An exception should be made for criminals who could cause harm within prison (i.e, someone who leads a prison gang). If they are successful in prison, than they need a punishment that is not simply more time in prison or fewer priviliges. The death penalty provides a sufficient punishment and protection for others in prison.

At 11/23/09 06:03 PM, poxpower wrote: Oh and word to the wise: don't be like AI.
Now he's backed himself into a corner and either keeps on going down that road of being ludicrously wrong or he admits he was being an idiot all along.

He's got no hope for saving his dignity.

So, people, learn from that. Don't invest yourself so much in anything that you can't come back out without looking like a dumbass. If you're always honest about what you know and don't know and learn to admit when you're wrong, you'll become a lot smarter a lot faster and you'll know how to avoid situations like these.

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY HEAD-ON
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD

Your final argument, and all you have is personal insults and theatrics? I have to admit that that's kind of sad.

This is what happens when you start a debate that has no set ending. The winning side can just repeat their positions, and the losing side usually slides into case shifts and insults.

At 11/23/09 04:33 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/23/09 04:19 PM, Al6200 wrote: dropping my other criticisms.

It's not even worth bothering because you can't even understand the explanation for ONE of the points, why would you suddenly understand and accept any other?

You've long since crossed into the realm of rock-headed crankism now. If you still don't get it after reading the latest posts by Elfer, you are either being dishonest or you're simply a moron :O

That's your excuse for dropping my points? I'm not sure that I can take that very seriously. In any case, I don't think that there's a reason in continuing to debate with you guys, since you're more or less repeating the same arguments over and over again (although both of you did drop the veil of ignorance half way through).

I'd advise anyone new to this thread to consider the arguments that Elfer and Poxpower have made in response to my initial post:

I demonstrated initially that the emails leaked necessarily demonstrate a wrongdoing and a deception: that there is wrongdoing inherent in the use of a trick to hide a decline, in the ousting of skeptics, in the attempt to hide evidence, and the manipulation of data sets.

Initially Poxpower and later Elfer responded that there was just not enough evidence, context, or scientific background - that we should ignore the evidence before us simply because we do not know everything that is available.

They later shifted their position and began to simply describe the trick that was used in great detail, overlooking the essential problem with using a trick for the purpose of deception. They never give a compelling justification for the actions that are described in the emails.

I'd like to conclude, unless Elfer or Poxpower have new (relevant, non-theatrical) arguments, by saying that the manipulation of evidence, collusion, and ousting of skeptics represents a great harm to society that we should not tolerate. Even those of us who agree with AGW should admit to the wrongdoings of specific scientists, and not try to justify their immoral means, even if they agree with their ends.

It's kind of hard to respond to this because it is so verbose and full of theatrics. I should point out that Elfer and Poxpower have focused almost entirely on the hide the decline comment, dropping my other criticisms. The real problem with your rebuttal, Elfer, is that you're just explaining what the trick is. You could write a 10 page paper on what the trick is, but that would not justify the deceptive ends of that trick. You've told us that they might want to hide newer information that is less valid, but there is still an ethical problem with hiding evidence that goes against their conclusions. You're not addressing the problem of them trying to hide that result. You've explained that there is a difference between justification and motivation, but frankly there is wrongdoing even if they could come up with a lame explanation for ousting the skeptic.

There are three elements of rhetoric: logic, credibility, and emotion. Now that AGW has lost its credibility, you're responding with emotion.

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/22 /these-will-be-artificially-adjusted/

Anyway, just to add more damning evidence, here is a post by the statistician Steve McIntyre, a statistician. He points to a post suggesting that the matlab code was obviously biased to get certain results.

You might say that Steve McIntyre shouldn't be considered because he is statistician and not a climate scientists, but you should quickly realize that this a tautology. Of course climate scientists support climate change, just as all baptist preachers will say that they believe in God. This is further strengthened by the ousting that was discussed in the emails.

Also McIntyre covers what exactly the nature trick was in this post:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7810

But I do not think that it is strictly necessary to understand to know every detail of the means of the trick if we know that the ends of the trick are malicious. But in any case, the above post gives what was asked for.

At 11/23/09 11:35 AM, Elfer wrote:

Yeah, and as an engineering student, you must know (or at least I'd hope you know) that accusations of ethical misconduct are NO BULLSHIT. This means that if you're going to accuse someone of fabricating results or suppressing important data, you have to have hard evidence of what they actually did. If there's a plausible legitimate explanation, you can't just say "Okay yeah, but I personally really think this person was doing a bad thing." That just won't cut it.

The accusations you're making against these researchers are extremely serious, and warrant much more than circumstantial claims based on semantics.

Do you understand the meaning of the word circumstantial? These emails are direct evidence of collusion, manipulation of evidence, and ousting skeptics. Those are very serious charges, and there is more than enough evidence for them to be made. Your smokescreen tactic of claiming that we should ignore the evidence simply because we do not know everything will not cut it here.

But you HAVEN'T considered the context AT ALL. To do so would mean that, since Friday, you have familiarized yourself with more than ten years of research and analysis by a team of scientists. I really doubt you actually did that. As I note below, you think it's irrelevant to look for the actual publication, which gives a good indication of what a flawed view you have of "context" in a scientific setting.

It's also worth noting that the "institutional, social wrongdoing" you're implying was all carried out through official channels, which means that even if they did have an agenda, they could only "oust" people from their positions in journals if they could actually demonstrate that those people were intentionally letting through bad articles, i.e. if those people were themselves engaged in unethical behaviour.

He ousted him because he was a skeptic. That is not a legitimate reason to kick someone out.

Incidentally, this sort of thing is a HUGE problem in controversial areas of science. The same thing happened with creation scientists getting into editorial boards, then cherry-picking peer reviewers to let through papers that would never pass a normal, rigorous academic review.

No, he says that he has evidence that he's a skeptic and that we wants to oust him. That is no minor thing. Also you are right to draw a parallel with creation science. Both climate scientists and creationists start with their conclusion and manipulate the evidence and models to get the "right" conclusion. Because they do not want any serious scrutiny, they try to ensure that their data doesn't get into the hands of those who could easily tear it apart.

Like I said, it doesn't mean they're trying to hide it in a publication, which they wouldn't be able to do anyway without actually forging data.

Have you considered, perhaps, that "hide" just means they're trying to mask the effect of a decline in usability of data by augmenting it with data from another source? And that maybe the reason they're doing this isn't to trick people, but to say, get a better estimate of the overall trend to build a statistical model? It's VERY EASILY possible that they're trying to "hide" this effect from an algorithm, not the public.

Do you think this might come up every once in a while in climatology, a science that heavily involves statistical modeling?

You're still dodging the issue. There would be no reason for them to hide the decline. If the usability of their evidence was declining and needed to be augmented, then they did not need to hide that augmentation, they needed to disclose that instead of hiding it.

The relevance of finding the actual publication is that it would show you what the results of these actions were. If they outright said "here's the data we collected" and had incorrect information, or they had failed to disclose the method they used to adjust the trend in recent decades, THEN it would be a problem. If they DID disclose it in the publication, or they disclosed it and were using it in order to estimate a more accurate trend, then it's not a problem at all.

Since this kind of data use occurs all the time in research, particularly in areas where you need long-term and short-term data but can't acquire both from the same source (climatology and geology being prime examples) just outright assuming unethical behaviour is insane.

If you think that these emails indicate that they ultimately published things that were intentionally misleading in terms of global temperature trends, you're going to have to corroborate your claims with the actual publications. You can't just say "I think this person probably published misleading information," without giving an actual example of published information that you consider misleading and expect people to take your accusations seriously.

Until you can connect your suspected meanings of the emails to actual observable acts, you're just a crank. Right now you (BARELY) have reason to be suspicious, but acting like you can say these things with any sort of certainty is total crap.

I already said that if the emails turned out to be fabrications, than I would concede the point. But if they are not, then they are necessarily sufficient for us to conclude some level of wrongdoing. You continue to overlook this point.

I'm not sure I see what you're trying to get at here. Almost all of your points are just repeats of what Poxpower said: I don't know everything about the specific means of wrongdoing, so I should just ignore evidence of collusion.

There really is not much point in continuing to destroy the same points over and over again. Like the climate scientists, you and Poxpower are starting with your conclusions, and then manipulating the evidence or using tricks to try to show that your position is correct.

Anyway, from Steve McIntyre I have the picture of what Mike's nature trick does.

Green is temperatures with Mike's nature trick being used to hide the decline.

Violet is the original.

Now read the email, try to think that the trick is not deceptive, and try not to laugh.

At 11/23/09 08:55 AM, Elfer wrote:

At 11/23/09 12:46 AM, Al6200 wrote: The CRU's explanations do provide a reasonable justification for the use of the word "trick", but not the use of the word hide. As I have explained earlier, the word hide implies a deception.

I can't believe you think you have any sort of grasp on the context involved in these emails. You automatically assume that "hide" implies "hide from those who will read our research" despite the fact that beyond outright fabricating data, they'd still have to report what they did, and if it was bullshit people would know.

I see you've also gone back to assuming that "the decline" refers to a decline in temperature, and not one of the following:

- A decline in quality of data
- A decline in a secondary variable used as an indicator of temperature which could be influenced by a non-temperature signal
- A decline in the availability of data from a certain source

I don't know how to make this clear to you, but "hide" in a scientific context doesn't always imply unethical deception of some sort.

You know what though, since you think you're capable of an in-context, straightforward reading of these emails, that means you must actually know what he's talking about. Since these are old archived emails, why don't you just go find the paper, since it would have been published by now, and show off his deception to everyone?

Oh wait, I know, it's because you don't actually know what the fuck any of these emails are talking about and you can't find any real evidence of wrongdoing.

All the points in this post have been made already by Poxpower, and I've explained why they're wrong, so I'll just list those reasons to you now:

1. We can never know what something means with 100% certainty, but that does not mean that all explanations are equally likely. To suggest otherwise is what is called the "veil of ignorance".

2. Most of the emails that are questionable are not highly technical, but rather discuss institutional, social wrongdoing. Even the more technical emails have statements that necessarily imply wrongdoing, especially if one considers their context.

3. Hiding a decline in quality, temperature, or secondary signal would all be more or less equally bad. They shouldn't be hiding anything. Moreover, one would have to ask how the second signal and quality effect the overall temperature.

4. Saying that I need to find his paper is another use of the veil of ignorance technique. I know from the emails that he was using a trick to hide a decline. I don't know exactly what the trick was in all of its technical detail, but the sentence does necessarily imply a deception. I don't know how to make this any clearer for you. Imagine a text was leaked saying "The garage is no good, you have to find a place to hide the body and the weapons". Unless the person was joking, that sentence would necessarily imply wrongdoing. You don't need to see the past 500 phone calls and text from the guy to know that he is trying to hide a body. It necessarily implies a deception through the use of the word hide.

If you found that text, would you really refuse to assume that it was either fake, a joke, or evidence of wrongdoing?

At 11/23/09 01:34 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/23/09 12:46 AM, Al6200 wrote:

But as of yet no one has presented a context that would justify hiding a decline

See, you're not even reading the explanation.

"The "decline" refers to the "divergence problem". This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). "

As far as I know, none of this points even to a decline of anything, especially a global decline of temperatures, which is the conclusion you've instantly jumped to, and then used THAT conclusion to jump to even MORE conclusions.

You're acting coy like evidence would change your mind, but you're lying. This is all the evidence anyone could possibly demand and you're not even gonna read it anyway.

I've read that weak explanation, and it doesn't explain why he'd need to use a trick to hide a decline, it just clarifies what trick was used. Even if we concede that the trick is legitamate, we still have to ask why Mann thought that he needed to use it to hide a decline.

You don't give a shit.

Again with the personal insults.

Trying to give credibility to your flimsy explanations

My explanations? Oh, you mean the one given by several CLIMATE EXPERTS.

Oh wait, climate experts must be in on the conspiracy too! Yes that makes more sense than you not understanding obscure climate research relating to tree ring measurement discrepancies.

I'm tired of repeating myself. The emails show collusion to remove skeptics who disagree with their consensus. Do you understand how that turns the argument you just made into a tautology?

What legitamate scientific purpose exists for hiding a temperature decline?

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1530

Basically, as far as I understand, they were using tree rings to calculate temperatures reliably but then the data is all fucked up after the 60s and their theory is that it's due to human activity. So they suggest not using that method post-60s and he was talking about hiding that on his graph because it's irrelevant data as it's not as reliable as data they can get through other instruments.

It has nothing to do with any temperature decline anywhere.

The end is to hide the temperature decline, the means are a trick towards the hiding of said decline. No matter how much jargon you wrap it in, that sentence necessarily implies a deception.

But simply for you to think you knew what they were talking about enough that you could bust them on bad behavior shows your total lack of humility towards actual experts and their work.

I find it funny that you keep pretending that most of these emails are in some technical language that cannot be understood by any lay person or anyone who was ousted for skepticism (you have yet to respond to this point). There is evidence of collusion, manipulation of evidence, or

Learn your lesson, next time you hear this kind of shit, take a couple days to reflect and see what their colleagues are saying because quite often, scientists are the only people who actually bust other scientists, not some crackpot deniers / lawyers/ politicians/ hackers.

Next time I'd advise you to look at the evidence first, and then concede the point if it clearly against you, which it is.

In any case, I'm wasting my time at this point. You've offered your explanations of the emails that are designed to show a benign end, I've offered reasonable explanations. If you want me to take you seriously, you should respond to my points (namely the evidence of collusion which you overlook completely) and leave out any personal insults or passive-aggressive posturing.

I'd advise any people who are new to this thread to look at the emails themselves before reading the debate between me and Poxpower.

At 11/22/09 09:17 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/22/09 08:17 PM, AapoJoki wrote:

Here is another explanation.

I mean, how much clearer can this get?

Those are sloppy explanations that anyone convicted of wrongdoing could come up with. Consider this: given any evidence of wrongdoing, someone can always say that they were taken out of context or that their critics didn't understand them.

Meh he's too far invested into this whole thing now.

Before two days ago, I did not have even the tiniest suspicion that global warming scientists were commiting collusion or manipulation of evidence. Even right now, I am not going to rush to the conclusion that this wrongdoing is systematic and exists beyond this group of people. But the fact remains that the group of people who have commited wrongdoing here are at the top of their field, and thus their actions have the unfortunate consequence of casting doubt on the credibility of the entire field.

Furthermore, if I saw persuasive evidence that these emails were forgeries or were given contexts for these emails that would render them as benign in a reasonable fashion, then I would gladly drop my position and concede. But as of yet no one has presented a context that would justify hiding a decline, changing received dates on emails (you have yet to offer an explanation for this email), and ousting skeptics.

The scientific community is just rolling their eyes at this because they know nothing's up but he's convinced that THEY'RE JUST IN ON IT TOO! Anyone who's an expert and who doesn't agree with him must be in on the conspiracy!

I'm sure those who haven't been ousted yet aren't taking this very seriously.

9/10 chance this thing is in the next Alex Jones video.

Now you're just trolling. I already explained this to you, multiple times. There is a difference between inventing collusions as explanations for phenomenon (what Alex Jones does), and accepting evidence of collusion as it appears.

Trying to give credibility to your flimsy explanations by associating me with conspiracy theorists is mean spirited and inappropriate. Throughout this thread, I have never resorted to personal attacks, and I expect you to treat me with the same level of decency.

At 11/22/09 08:17 PM, AapoJoki wrote:

At 11/22/09 07:40 PM, Al6200 wrote: Hiding a decline in temperature (which fits public email records, remember that these guys publish results)

They didn't specifically mention hiding a decline in temperature in that e-mail. This is your own addition. The meaning of the word "hide" is explained here (see Gavin's response). To be honest, I don't understand much of it, but at least it provides a context for the use of the word.

Here is another explanation.

Ah yes, that they were discussing temperature came from the Real Climate Blog, not that it wasn't obvious from the get go (despite early attempts in this thread to claim that they could have been referring to anything).

The CRU's explanations do provide a reasonable justification for the use of the word "trick", but not the use of the word hide. As I have explained earlier, the word hide implies a deception. What legitamate scientific purpose exists for hiding a temperature decline? It seems extremely likely that they wanted to hide the decline in temperature so that people would not doubt AGW or question their models.

I've addressed Poxpower's interpretations of the emails that absolve the authors from wrongdoing to a sufficient degree, so unless he has any new arguments, I'll summarize my position. This event is in some ways a parallel to the fiasco of the US not finding WMDs in Iraq. At the time, the media did not report on WMDs not being found in any great detail, probably because they did not want to report that the pretenses of the war were unsound until they had more conclusive evidence. Not finding WMDs only generated chatter on the far left, but the neoconservatives lost their credibility with the American people and today the movement is not taken very seriously.

I don't think that AGW has much credibility left now.

At 11/22/09 07:16 PM, Victory wrote: Let's face it, the only reason any of the right-wingers in this thread agree that the scientists manipulated their results is because they are so eager to continue living in their magical infallible capitalist bubble that they would rather take to belittling and demeaning the validity of science by subtly indicating belief or support for far-fetched conspiracy nonsense propaganda involving a large percentage of the scientific community as well as political and social institutions around the world than actually realise and face up to the threat to mankind that so ominously looms across our future as a species.

lol, I agree that the scientists manipulated their results because that's what the emails directly suggest. If Bush leaked an email saying "Let's use official means to oust a guy who is skeptical of the Iraq war" or "I'll send out some casualty statistics to my colleagues, but I might have to respond to more crap criticisms from the democrats, make sure they don't get into the wrong hands" then the anti-war groups would (rightly) question the credibility of the Republicans.

You would rather see Shell bring in more billions so you can keep your misplaced sense of pride in your greed-driven ideology; eschewing the results and advice of the greatest institution mankind has ever produced in the process; all the while putting on a facade of healthy scepticism and the maintaining of 'tradition'. Rot in (nonexistent) hell.

The scientists having a conspiracy and manipulating evidence is not inconsistent with AGW, but it does cast a shadow of doubt upon its conclusions. To ask whether or not a person is justified in using deception and conspiracy to support a policy that they believe in is essentially a question of whether the ends justify the means, which is outside of the scope of this thread. In any case the scientists should be held accountable for their actions, even if they had a good will in using deception.

At 11/22/09 01:32 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/22/09 12:42 PM, Al6200 wrote:

there are always ways to explain the emails that would absolve them of any wrongdoing.

Yeah and it just so happens that those explanations are more than reasonable.

No, they aren't. They make no sense in the context of the emails.

Again, no one's up in arms about any of this except the conspiracy nuts and the deniers. Don't you find that strange? If there was anything to this, the scientific community would be the first to shoot those guys down.

Your point about the scientific community is a tautology. One of the emails discusses the ousting of those who disagree with the "consensus". Thus there is a manufactured consensus that is necessarily unanimous, similar to the consensus among Baptist preachers that God exists.

Maybe he was trying to "hide the decline"

THAT WAS EXPLAINED, DIDN'T YOU EVEN READ IT?
Not to mention NEITHER YOU OR I COULD POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND WHAT HE WAS WORKING ON. You have NO IDEA what he's talking about, all you've read is the word "hide" and assume that if he's "hiding" something then it must be super-secret and something THE PUBLIC!!!!1111111 can't see or ELSE he'd be RUINED!!!11111
When in fact it's pretty clear from all the explanations that all he's doing is omitting a simple set of data ( out of THOUSANDS THAT EXIST,HELLO ) from one graph / program / paper or whatever he's doing.

There is no good reason to hide a decline in temperature. If his results suggest a decline in temperature, then he is morally obligated to publish what his facts suggest instead of using a trick to hide them.

Not only do you not understand what they're doing, but YOU REFUSE TO TRY, instead thinking "hey I know they did something wrong now!".

That's just unacceptable, especially when you have the explanations STRAIGHT IN YOUR FACE and none of them are unlikely, irregular etc. and they make FAR more sense than to think they're somehow being dishonest manipulators.

I

can't

believe

this

crap

I'm not going to respond to this. I think that anyone worth persuading will be able to weigh the value of logical analysis above theatrics.

At 11/22/09 03:13 PM, JohnnyWang wrote:

Welcome to debating with conspiracy nuts 101. Your logic is no good here.

But lets make the following clear to nay-sayers:

When you publish a scientific study, it will be peer-reviewed which means people with expertise on the field go through your research and see if they can find faults in it. That's their job, to see if it's on solid ground. For a forgery to pass through the process would either imply gross incompotence, or a conspiracy among scientists

There is a conspiracy, at least among the scientists at this station. Consider that they ousted anyone who seriously questioned their results:

"Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted."

Changing document received date (which should NEVER BE DONE):

"Gene/Caspar, Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn't appear to be in CC's online first, but comes up if you search. You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn't changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today. Ammann/Wahl - try and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

Trying to cut out coldish years at the end. This isn't direct evidence of conspiracy, but it does show that they were not acting as scientists should, with their results following from the evidence:

"Yeah, it wasn't so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer - 10 year - period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I'll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that's trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years."

Why is he concerned about the freedom of information act if he hasn't commited any wrongdoing?

"If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. "

Don't try to hide behind the flimsy talking points of "the emails were out of context or technical jargon". Ousting someone for being a skeptic is not technical jargon, and it has sufficient context to be understood with a high degree of confidence. Moreover, none of the emails I just listed were in technical jargon, they were all matters of company policy and actions.

So we are left with three optiions:
1. The entire climatologist community are incompotent fools led by the nose by these few scheming neferious researches after monney and reputation
2. The etire scientific community is united in a grand conspiracy
3. You are reading way too much into a few emails taken out of context using specialist jargon

Yeah, let's see what Occams razor says

You don't understand Occam's razor. The most likely explanation is that these specific scientists were in a conspiracy to manipulate data and throw out dissenters. Explanation #3 does not work because it contradicts the evidence. Saying that you want to oust a skeptic (they did oust that particular skeptic later on) is not technical jargon. Hiding a decline in temperature (which fits public email records, remember that these guys publish results) is not justified and it is not technical jargon, because that is written in a passive voice. A fact can only be hidden from a person or a group of people, there is no legitamate reason to hide the decline. But does anyone seriously doubt, with a straight face, that they wanted to hide temperature decline so that their models would not be shown to be wrong?

You've given a lot of far fetched explanations for these emails that would downplay any signs of wrongdoing. As I said in my second post here, there are always ways to explain the emails that would absolve them of any wrongdoing. Maybe he was trying to "hide the decline" in how often he was doing his dishes from his wife, and it just happened to be in an email about temperature data and discussions about what data sets to include. Maybe he didn't want to keep his data from the skeptics when he said to keep the information out of the "wrong hands", maybe he was actually talking about the public and had accidentally made it come after the sentence where he was talking about the skeptics attacking his papers. Maybe it had nothing to do with his earlier refusals to give skeptics his data sets to review, which would likely reveal him as a fraud for using the nature trick to hide the decline.

You can come up with far fetched explanations, but an in context, straight reading, shows clear evidence of wrongdoing and fraud.

At 11/21/09 10:32 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/21/09 10:06 PM, Al6200 wrote:

They don't explain it, they just minimize it. "Hide" was indeed a poor choice of words, because it showed that they were using deception in their research.

What research is that exactly? Apparently you know enough about that to be able to say that this data is relevant to the paper they were publishing and it was actual non-controversial, peer-reviewed results?
Sounds to me like all they did was omit a dataset that was wonky and badly tested. They do that all the time, for instance when a study that is badly done yields results they weren't expecting.
They just used the word "hide" instead of saying "omit" or "don't bother showing". That's what it seems to me.

I already explained this to you: the word "hide" implies deception. Even a child knows that. The word "omit" does not. Can you think of a use of the word "hide" that does not imply a deception?

Imagine Bush leaking an email during the Iraq war saying "Use the DOD casualty trick to hide the increase". Would you not accept in a heartbeat that he was using deception to try to hide the level of casualty increases.

He already said that he was sending it to colleagues, so the explanation about not letting people see the unfinished thing doesn't really work.

Yeah it does because they are colleagues in his domain who can review his code before he publishes it.
Again, when you publish a paper, that's something you do. You show what you're working on to experts you trust who can help you. You don't randomly leak your project to everyone.
But again that's what I'm getting from the email, who knows what the hell he's talking about, what his code does, what it pertains to etc.

Again, this is the veil of ignorance. We don't know everything, but we can still draw likely conclusions from what he says. When he says that he doesn't want his data to get into the hands of the wrong people, right after he said that he wanted it to get to colleagues, it is obvious to any thinking person that he does not want his data to face real scrutiny from skeptics.

Imagine George Bush getting some facts about the Iraq war and saying in an email "Send this over to the CIA ... we don't want this to get into the hands of the wrong people". Anyone with any amount of intelligence would be able to conclude a high likelihood of wrongdoing and deception.

This is evidence of exactly nothing.

Except collusion, ousting of dissenters, deception, and manipulation of data. The two emails that you focus on: the one about info getting into the wrong hands and hiding the decline.

You really don't see what's wrong with this? You think that good scientists are trying to make sure that their research doesn't get into the hands of critics?

This is exactly as nuts as saying J.K. Rowling doesn't want to show her Harry Potter book before the official release so the critics won't tear it apart ( before it's even finished).
It's nonsensical on so many levels.

Well, he did mention criticism from skeptics a few sentences beforehand, and it seems sort of silly to equate Rowling's profit motive to the motive of a scientist receiving public funding.

In any case, one would get more from reading the email than listening to either your interpretation or mine:

Dear Phil and Gabi,
I've attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don't pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

Spin it as you will, but it is quite obvious that he doesn't want to deal with any criticisms that may undermine his conclusions.

In fact, I missed something the first time I read it. He says that he "cleaned" it up knowing that he would respond to more "crap" criticisms. It seems possible that cleaning the data was their jargon for removing data sets that went against their set conclusions. Moreover, what else could it mean?

Exactly, the scientists didn't predict it. They used the nature trick to hide the decline!

What are you talking about????

Remember the nature trick to hide the decline?

Sure, we all know how the climate scientists would never manipulate evidence, oust those who dissent, or change received dates or delete emails.

See how you're already imbued in the conspiracy? Even before knowing anything about the emails or understanding their context, suddenly you're suspecting the entire community of ignoring evidence, hiding data etc.

There is evidence of the conspiracy from the emails, independent of their context (there is no reason to hide a decline in any context).

And now you're invested into being right about this. Now you'll try to rationalize this to see how you can still be right about it somehow.

All you did was take my argument and reverse the object, even though it makes no sense if presented that way. I'm not rationalizing any evidence that is contrary to my established worldview. I was actually very surprised to see evidence of collusion and deception among climate scientists

It's too late for you basically.

No, I've just presented the evidence of collusion, ousting dissenters, etc. I don't think that any person will buy your rationalizations of the evidence unless they have a deep invest in AGW themselves.