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Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#61

Post by acqq »

moonchrome wrote: post #60
acqq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There they are, they are agreed by the scientists of the whole world, so again no need to worry about the e-mails of one country's organization: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against.

>There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against. Wait - but you didn't verify it your self ? After all : >You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results. Or does it all boil down to trust and your original argumen…

Why does it matter what I have personally done or not done? Science works. E-mails are irrelevant. That's what we're discussing. If you claim that science doesn't work, you can prove that, but you have to know the science, or nobody will believe your claim. The major problem you'd have in order to prove that the current findings are wrong is that even the simplest formulas are against you. So you'd have to accept 99% of the existing results at the end and then to discover something completely new that amazingly nobody discovered up to now but that makes bigger influence on the results than everything known up to now. Good luck with that, as the data already add up now, as you can see in these graphs on the Bloomberg.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#62

Post by gaius »

mrow84 wrote: post #40
gaius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any science based on simulation, any member of the public should be able to download, compile and run on their PC and get exactly the same results. It's the only way to be completely transparent. C and FORTRAN compilers are free.

It's important to recognise that a lot of the model runs are done on super-computers, and the runs themselves aren't always easy to replicate from a practical point of view, because of things like resource limitations and configuration issues. I certainly agree that things should be open sourced, probably allowing for some kind of embargo system for publication, but we shouldn't allow a rhetoric to develop suggesting…

Today's supercomputer is a GPU in 5 years time.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#63

Post by dalke »

sanderjd wrote: post #47
cracker_jacks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then have a separate group of scientists reproduce the results and review the methodology used. Their publication should provide all the information necessary to reproduce and evaluate their findings. All the possible 'evidence' of misconduct will be there in the data. Using a subpoena to threaten scientists for finding results you don't agree with is a form of censorship.

Unless the data collection itself is biased. The solution to that is to have another team collect its own data and compare its findings. But now you once again have scientists doing science, and if those scientists confirm the other findings, then they might also have used biased methods, so you once again have to either trust them, or not. So to build trust, yet more scientists have to collect and analyze yet more d…

Congress had a solution to this problem, in the Office of Technology Assessment. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen... :

> The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States Congress from 1972 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century, i.e. technology assessment. It was a leader in practicing and encouraging delivery of public services in innovative and inexpensive ways, including early involvement in the distribution of government documents through electronic publishing. Its model was widely copied around the world.

It was de-funded "Contract with America" period of the 1990s.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#64

Post by thaumasiotes »

acqq wrote: post #38
moonchrome wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if I can run a formula/program that tells me Y from X if I can't understand/trust the program/formula ? If you think that stuff like economics/climatology/etc. has the same level of rigor and validation applied to it as established and verified theories from hard science then boy do I have some bad news for you (struggling for SD 2 as ideal vs SD 5 for eg.).

I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/…

Physics works, but that's because physicists don't even try to address large-scale phenomena like weather. Sufficient application of physics will let you know who's going to win the Super Bowl. And yet, nobody can do that.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#65

Post by thaumasiotes »

moonchrome wrote: post #53
fineman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Work with experts" the way you already work with accountants, lawyers, etc. Hire two and have one check the other. And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. Many people don't want to put the time in to try but it's well within the reach of any high-school grad.

>Hire two and have one check the other. Not if you don't trust the field. It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results. Not saying I agree with the view but science is a lot less convincing when when you can't setup repeatable experiments. >And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. You'r…

> It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results.

To be fair, this is excellent advice, much better than "your numerologist knows what he's talking about, and you'd better follow his recommendations".

No real reason to compare the results afterwards, though.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#66

Post by tptacek »

lemevi wrote: post #6

Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…

The emails aren't more important than the data, but that doesn't matter: these are government employees communicating on government servers about government work, and whether we like it or not (in this instance, I don't!), Congress is entitled to the messages.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#67

Post by acqq »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #64
acqq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/…

Physics works, but that's because physicists don't even try to address large-scale phenomena like weather. Sufficient application of physics will let you know who's going to win the Super Bowl. And yet, nobody can do that.

But we don't ask who's going to win the Super Bowl. It's that we know that if we let 100 people in one isolated room to watch Super Bowl the room will be always warmer as long as people actually live in it and are allowed to eat (life also involves more heat from the food, assume we add them food all the time). The doubters claim that it doesn't have to happen. It does. We can calculate how much warmer approximately even if we can't be 100% sure for every minute, on the average the curve will match.

It's the same with the Earth. It's as isolated as the isolated room would be -- we know exactly how much heat can dissipate and how much must contribute to the increase of the temperature for the room, and we have quite good estimates for Earth too (less heat dissipates to the space when CO2 increases, and the Sun shines the heat nevertheless - we can nicely calculate even the contributions of the changes in orbit and some clever scientist did that even before the computers were available, it took years of calculations by hand then but it was done). We can be wrong for some particular year, but the direction and the average increase match.

The room is of course simpler than the Earth. Imagine having some water pumps, some fans and some chunks of ice in the room. You know the formulas for the water and ice but you have more to calculate for short term effects. But you still know there will be less ice as the time goes by and more water. And still always a bit warmer.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#68

Post by sanderjd »

dalke wrote: post #63
sanderjd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the data collection itself is biased. The solution to that is to have another team collect its own data and compare its findings. But now you once again have scientists doing science, and if those scientists confirm the other findings, then they might also have used biased methods, so you once again have to either trust them, or not. So to build trust, yet more scientists have to collect and analyze yet more d…

Congress had a solution to this problem, in the Office of Technology Assessment. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen... : > The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States Congress from 1972 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issue…

Very interesting. I wasn't aware of that! I'm still skeptical of the ability for anything to be completely "objective and authoritative", but that still seems like a good thing to have, and it's unfortunate that it was eliminated.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#69

Post by gavanwoolery »

dragop wrote: post #49
gavanwoolery wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://i.imgur.com/axlcWY1.jpg The above graph is the source data for the famous "Hockey Stick" graph. The one below it is similar data taken from another location (IIRC one was taken in Arizona, the other California). Why they chose to use one and not both is beyond me. So, there are some types of science that are more based on perception. (Note, I'm not saying that this instance invalidates anthropogenic global war…

> The above graph is the source data for the famous "Hockey Stick" graph. The one below it is similar data taken from another location (IIRC one was taken in Arizona, the other California). Why they chose to use one and not both is beyond me. The hockey stick graph is based on a aggregation of global or hemispherical temperature records. It is most certainly not based on a single temperature record from Arizona.

http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-...

It turns out the data was blended, but it was weighted in an odd way to favor the spikey outcome at the end. This is just one source, so take it with a grain of salt.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#70

Post by lutorm »

Karunamon wrote: post #15
tobltobs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following your logic the emails of politicans should be public record also, shouldn't it? Who on the NOAA part does ignore a law? And if you don't let complete strangers in your house, do you hide something?

Of course they should - at least the ones pertaining to their official duties. I do not understand your next two questions.

You know Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, right? They just happened to exclude themselves from that one.
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