Pelt Michaels? Climategate includes swipe at Pat
One scientist was so irked by global warming skeptic Pat Michaels that he ill-advisedly jotted an email expressing interest in slugging Michaels.FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO
The summit on global warming opened in Copenhagen December 7, but the heat generated by hacked emails that appeared November 20 has refused to cool, even in the face of the salacious Tiger Woods scandal.
Former Virginia state climatologist and global warming skeptic Pat Michaels ("Hurricane Pat," as we once fondly dubbed him) pops up in an email as someone that a scientist from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California would like to attack–- and not just in the latest issue of a peer-reviewed journal.
"I'm really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff," Benjamin Santer allegedly wrote a colleague. "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."
The electronic missives purloined from the University of East Anglia show researchers talking about fudging data and keeping skeptical views out of scholarly journals. Such inconvenient truths have already resulted in the resignation of the Dr. Phil Jones, head of climate research there, and they have given Michaels, who sorta got pushed out of Charlottesville for his own contrarian views, a new pulpit.
“This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” Michaels, now with the Cato Institute, tells the New York Times.
"I'd be surprised if his name didn't come up," says Jerry Stenger, director of UVA's climatology office, of his controversial former boss. "It's very common to discuss others' work."
Also common in scientific circles are "fierce disagreement and strong opinion," says Stenger. What's not so common: "not really following scientific method in significant ways."
Science 101 is that research needs to be reproducible, reminds Stenger. "It sounds like there's been some reluctance in some of the folks to make that data available so other researchers can analyze their conclusions," he says. "That's the most bothersome thing."
The hacked emails have "really muddied the water and made a lot of folks wonder how reliable [the data] are," says Stenger.
"That's the most worrisome," says Stenger. "That's not the way science is supposed to work. It's supposed to be transparent so that others can verify the work."
Stenger hesitates to predict the fall-out from Climategate, but he is willing to predict something interesting to Central Virginia: a colder than usual winter with the odds of a white Christmas one in three for the next three years.
12 comments
The science must stand on its own.
In science the burden of proof is on the theory.
The theory must provide the proof.
If the theory makes a prediction, which it must to not simply be a hypothesis, and the prediction is wrong then the theory is discarded.
That is part of the scientific method.
The AGW theory predicts that CO2 causes global warming.
CO2 is higher now then it was in 1998.
Average global temperature has been declining since 1998
The prediction made by the theory is wrong therefore the AGW theory must be discarded.
QED.
It is called the scientific method. It only takes one wrong result to discard a theory.
'No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.' Albert Einstein
Please see also:
scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming:
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
I think that this article is more of a local interest story than an attempt to actually describe the scientific controversy.
Oh, and the 2000's were apparently the warmest decade on record:
"Despite recent fluctuations in global temperature year to year, which fueled claims of global cooling, a sustained global warming trend shows no signs of ending, according to new analysis by the World Meteorological Organization made public on Tuesday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09climate.html?hp
Yes, it's a local interest story that ends with quotations that raise questions about the research of scientists involved in the email. No need to be provocative without acknowledging the bigger picture. (I do not condone some of the things said in the excerpted emails, but at the same time, these were stolen, private correspondence and taken out of context).
wigwam6,
Actually, there are 1.3 billion cattle in the world today. There were an estimated 60 to 100 million bison in the mid-19th century. But why let empirical evidence get in the way of your argument?
I’ll start worrying about global warming when Greenland becomes farmland again.
***
Yeah, that worked out really well for the Norse.
it worked out well for the because????
Oh thats right the earth cooled off.....
must have benn when the vikings cars ran out of whale blubber to burn for fuel...
Why does Andrew30 say such silly things? 1998 saw unusually warm temperatures for a single year due to various factors such as El Nino conditions. Single-year temperatures were slightly lower in subsequent years, but a running mean clearly shows a continued upward trend in global temperature.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
The critical missing piece of information here is that science related to climate change is much more robust than what can be challenged by excerpts from a few private emails (of hundreds) stolen from a server. Too often the climate 'debate' is reported in the media as equal between a few who challenge the science and a much larger number whose research supports current climate theory and predictions linking greenhouse warming with increasing emissions. The political debate is valid and ongoing (what are we going to do about it?), but presenting a raging scientific controversy is less so.
I am disappointed at the simplistic approach of the piece this blog.
I suggest anyone who has real questions about climate science should:
1. read and follow the advice provided in the thoughtful email exchange between John Holdren and someone doubting climate science (these emails were also stolen last month. Funny that these are not receiving the same attention): http://www.ostp.gov/galleries/press_release_files/holdren_email.pdf
or 2. send questions to members of the AGU (American Geophysical Union). This scientific group has set up a means for journalists to ask climate science questions over the next two weeks: http://sites.google.com/site/agucopenhagen/home
Yes, it's a local interest story that ends with quotations that raise questions about the research of scientists involved in the emails. No need to be provocative without acknowledging the bigger picture. (I do not condone some of the things said in the excerpted emails, but at the same time, these were stolen, private correspondence and taken out of context).
Bring on the Global warming. There is much more land that is currently too cold to live on than is too hot. More rainfall means more food and fresh water. Maybe we can move the people from the desert to canada and greenland.
None of the models account for the fact that less people will die of starvation if the earth warms up a little.
more people die from cold than from heat.
Think of all the money we will save driving to the beach... according to al gore the beach will be in short pump.
cynthia,
Al gore says that cows cause 18% of greenhouse gasses.
There are 100 million cows in the us
There were 600 million buffalo in the US in 1860,
18x6=108%
Why did we not have global warming then?
Can you explain that?
I'll start worrying about global warming when Greenland becomes farmland again.