If it is not Open Science, it is not Science at All!

University of East Anglia's Phil Jones: Why should I give you this data when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?

On the Freedom Of Information Act, there is a little leaflet we have all been sent. It doesn’t really clarify what we might have to do regarding programs or data. Like all things in Britain, we will only find out when the first person or organization asks. I wouldn’t tell anybody about the Freedom Of Information Act in Britain. I don’t think the University of East Anglia really knows what’s involved. _Phil Jones email

Inquisition _Goya

In the infant field of climate science, "science" is practised a bit differently than has traditionally been the case. In climate science, data is held close to the vest, to prevent other scientists from finding something wrong with it. But is being so secretive with your data truly science? Probably not.

Some scientists are reluctant to share "their" data, even if it was generated with public money. In some cases this has led to Freedom of Information requests, which many see as intrusive.

...If you care about the place of science in society or are worried about the quality of information on the web, then openness offers massive potential to engage people more deeply, educate them about how science works and increase the store of quality information on the web.

If you care about evidence-based policy then making that evidence available for criticism and investigation by any interested party, including those you disagree with, can only be a good thing.

Above all, you should care because science thrives on new ideas and critical analysis, wherever they come from. Open science is better science. There will be growing pains as we figure out how best to enable that. But if we believe that science enriches society then we must accept that society can, and perhaps should, enrich our research. And that can only happen if it is open. _Cameron Neylon_NewScientist

An inquisitional atmosphere pervades the entire field of climate science practise, publishing, public relations, and politics. Within an inquisitional atmosphere, true science is impossible. And yet, that is what is happening. Here is a recent example:

Editor of science magazine forced to resign over "heretical" paper he allowed to be published

...this was highly unusual, to have an editor-in-chief resign over a paper that was not retracted.

Apparently, peer review is now carried out by reporters calling scientists on the phone and asking their opinion on something most of them do not even do research on. A sad day for science. _WUWT

This is a dominant pattern within the orthodoxy of climate science: maintain control of what is published via a tight circle of prominent peer reviewers, then attack anyone connected with any papers which manage to slip through the encirclement. This is not the first editor to be forced to recant and fall upon his sword for the climate orthodoxy, and it will not likely be the last.

Phil Jones is an interesting example of a climate inquisitor and cabalist. Professor of climate at the Climate Research Unit of UEA, he has never been particularly open with his data, nor has he been honest. Jones has been pampered by UK government investigators looking into his scientific misconduct. The UK media has circled the wagons around Phil Jones, trying to make him seem a victim and a rightful object of public sympathy.

Climate Science is the rotten apple of science, which needs to be thrown out to prevent the same type of quasi-religious corruption from contaminating the rest of science. Climate science is an inter-disciplinary field, made up of scientists trained in physics, meteorology, atmospheric sciences, oceanography, geology, computer science, and more. It would be best to allow further research into climate to take place under the auspices of parent disciplines, where the integrity of data and the scientific method are more likely to be honoured.

Inter-disciplinary research could still be carried out, with all of the data and codes available to everyone for examination and critique. But the integrity and reputation of long-established disciplines of science would have to stand behind the research and methods. "Climate science" is a one-trick pony that was not ready for prime time -- and cut too many corners and broke too many rules to be allowed to continue pretending to be a science.

If it is not open science, it is not science at all.

Why the Obama / Gore Carbon Hysteria Orthodoxy Is Wrong

A short 9 minute video based on the scientific findings of climatologist Roy Spencer, explaining why the IPCC climate orthodoxy and associated media / political carbon hysteria is turning out to be wrong. More at WUWT

According to the Greenland ice core charted above, temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago, and warmer yet 2,000, then 3,000 years ago etc. CO2 levels have also been significantly higher in the past, particularly during some of the Earth's most prolific evolutionary eras.

It has been profitable for scientists and faux environmentalists to jump on the climate alarmist bandwagon. It was easy to fool the politicians, academics, and government funding agency bureaucrats -- and particularly easy to fool "science journalists" -- causing them all to panic.

Thanks to Obama administration suppression of coal, offshore oil & gas, nuclear power, and opposition to expanded use of Canadian oil sands, the US almost toppled into a state of energy starvation -- saved only by the fortuitous rise of the shale oil & gas industry. And the Obama administration is even trying to shut down shale fracking, behind the scenes! How stupid is that?

Healthy economies need energy. Lots of energy. When a US president bases his energy policy on a pseudoscientific theory of carbon hysteria, the entire nation suffers.

Politically Correct Delusions and Madnesses of Crowds

The fates of modern democratic societies are dependent far more upon the behaviour of crowds -- or the mob -- than most citizens would like to believe. Popular culture is determined by mob tastes and preferences, and the often unpredictable behaviour of mobs on election day is bemoaned by leaders of all political parties -- at one time or another. Mob behaviours are guided by mob beliefs, which are as often as not, delusional. Here is a good example of a modern popular delusion from Princeton Physics Professor William Happer:

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.

...We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than 1 percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it?

...As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

...We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.

The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

...A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

...The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. _WUWT

Full article by Professor Happer at First Things

Another popular delusion of politically correct crowds is a strong belief in the desirability of replacing modern coal, gas, and nuclear power plants with wind and solar power.

Mass delusions do not require reason or logic to gain converts. They only need to project the view that "everyone knows that ..." "every schoolboy knows ..." or "everybody believes that ..." This false sense of security in perceived numbers of believers has taken in a huge number of pseudo-intellectuals within the academy, in journalism, in politics, and in popular media and entertainment. All the better to project the delusion of universal belief.

In hindsight, such delusional madnesses are quite clearly absurd and without rational foundation. But when one is living through the delusion, the primeval instincts of the species hold sway.

Basic Reading on crowd behaviour:

Gustave le Bon: The Crowd
Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Both titles above are also available for download at the Gutenberg Project

More on Gustave le Bon from Against Politics

23 May 2011 More: The increasingly rowdy and violent mobs known as government unions should be seen a particularly ominous portent for the future, to anyone who cares about freedom and independent action.

Why Are Carbon Hysterics Going Cuckoo Trying to Explain A Cold and Snowy Winter as Another Sign of Climate Catastrophe?

Willis Eschenbach WUWT
It looks as if the January 2011 global temperature anomaly may be a full degree Fahrenheit below "average." And the brutal winter snow assaults against North America and Europe are probably not over yet. It was winter in the Northern Hemisphere the last time I checked, so why are carbon hysterics going out of their minds trying to explain cold and snow as a sign of catastrophic global warming?!!?

Willis Eschenbach takes a look at some of the mathematical prestidigitation upon which the global enterprise of climate catastrophism rests, and begins to suspect that the catastrophists are stuck in a dark, airless compartment of their own construction. In other words, the mathematically modeled construction of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) finds itself "locked in." It has no choice but to continue to argue -- more and more frantically as believed necessary -- that the construct is the only possible valid way to view the climate.

Certainly many of the superstars of climate catastrophe are finding themselves being discredited by ClimateGate and any number of other ongoing discoveries of dishonest, dishonourable, and unscientific shenannigans that have been perpetrated by the IPCC's first team players -- in the attempt to keep the bandwagon of CAGW orthodoxy from crashing and burning entirely.

Fortunately, there is light at the end of the highly politicised IPCC tunnel of obfuscation. Alternative means of publication are springing up for honest climate researchers, far out of the reach of the carbon hysteric overlords and overseers. Even President Doombama Obama of the USA neglected to mention climate change or promote carbon trading in his most recent State of the Union address to the nation.

The future will demand the best and most honest efforts from science, technology, economics, and politics, which the human species can produce. This is no time to get stuck in a blind box and go cuckoo.

More 29Jan11: Did government agencies lie about 2010 being the "warmest year ever?"

Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets

The amount of money being spent on climate change research this year is astounding. I urge you to read the document yourself. Here is the question to take away: what are we getting for the billions of dollars we've spent? When 2011 is over will we look back at the published research and be satisfied with how our billions have been spent? This type of spending has occurred for some time, and what do we have to show for it? Multiple federal agencies having multi-hundred million dollar budgets in the same (controversial) field is wasteful. Let's make sure 2011 is the last year these budgets increase. _ClimateQuotes_via_TomNelson

Tom Nelson from ClimateQuotes
Climate Change is a big money complex. The US government alone spends roughly $4 billion a year to finance climate research and initiatives. That level of spending leaves all private US entities in the dust by a factor of roughly 1,000. In North America, the US federal government controls climate change spending.

The big winner in the climate change money train is the National Science Foundation. They are requesting $1.616 billion dollars. They want $766 million dollars for the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Program. This is a 15.9% increase from their last budget. They also need another $370 million for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) an increase of 16%. The say they also need another $480 million for Atmospheric Sciences an increase of 8.1% and Earth Sciences up 8.7%. Oh, and not to be left out we need $955 million for the Geosciences Directorate, an increase of 7.4%. That’s a mighty hefty sum of money to dig into if you’re doing climate change research. _EnergyTribune

A 15.9% increase from last year's budget? They must have found some very, very urgent issues that need their attention. Certainly things are getting desperate for the NSF to be requesting so much more money to study this issue -- right in the middle of a long-term economic downturn?

The second largest request for money in 2011 comes from the Department of Energy. They say they need $627 million dollars for things like funding for renewable energy. The request represents a whopping 37% increase from last year! They want a 12% increase for energy efficiency programs. They want to eliminate $2.7 billion dollars of subsidies for industries that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. A 37% increase? I thought we were broke. _ET

OMG! A 37% increase for the DOE for climate change related programs. Certainly we are on the razor's edge, one whisker's breadth from total oblivion?

For 2011 NASA wants $438 million dollars to study climate change, an increase of 14%. NASA’s total Earth Sciences budget request is actually $1.8 billion dollars. Some $809 million of that is for satellites, some of which are specifically put in orbit to study climate change. It is difficult to separate out which ones are for climate monitoring and which ones are not so I won’t include this number in the over all climate change money train, but make no mistake about it, a significant percentage of the $809 million is exclusively for climate change satellites. _ET

NASA doesn't have the time for space exploration, now that climate change is so much better at ripping budget funds out of tight fisted congresspersons. No, NASA is all climate change, all the time, now.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking for $437 million dollars for climate research. This is an increase of 21.4% from the previous budget. This includes funds for regional and national assessments of climate change including ocean acidification. Once again, another meaty bag of money to tap into for researchers who have nice cars and big houses and need to keep up the payments. All aboard the money train!

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is also interested in tapping into the climate change vault. They say they need $244 million in 2011. Of this total, $171 million is for the Climate Change Adaptation Initiative. This program identifies areas and species that are most vulnerable to climate change and implements coping strategies. Another $73 million is needed for The New Energy Frontier Initiative. The goal of this program is to increase solar, wind and geothermal energy capacity. Interesting that solar and wind power don’t actually make any money without this government funding.

Wow! This list just goes on and on, no wonder we have a $14 trillion dollar deficit!

But wait! as the say on TV there’s more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants there share of the pot of gold. They need $169 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of 1%. Do you really believe that next year greenhouse gases will be reduced by EPA spending $169 million dollars? I would bet the ranch that greenhouse gases will continue to increase next year and the year after that and the year after that despite EPA spending millions of dollars. It’s a complete waste of $169 million dollars.

I’m beginning to wonder if there is any government agency that does not get some climate change funding! The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants $338 million dollars for climate change programs. They want $159 million dollars for climate change research, up a whopping 42%. They also want another $179 million for renewable energy, an increase of 41%! The USDA’s climate change efforts are supposed to help farmer and land owners adapt to the impacts of climate change. _ET

The popular message we get from the idiots in the media and the echo chorus of circular jerkulars, is that big oil and big coal is funding a vast network of climate change deniers. The reality is that institutions such as the US government outspend more neutral and anti-catastrophe entities by about 1,000 to 1.

Smart people tend to be skeptical people. But virtually the full weight of government, journalism, academia, and the entertainment media is pushing the public to accept uncritically the orthodox dogma of anthropogenic climate catastrophe. From the first grade of school -- if not earlier -- children are indoctrinated into the cult of carbon hysteria by their teachers, as if the fate of the world depended on the little tykes adopting a boundless attitude of carbon hysteria. And from there it only gets worse. Paid for by your government, of course, which means you.

Ever since ClimateGate, more smart people have peeled off from the mass of unthinking drones. But the government-financed, media amplified message of catastrophe continues to blare at full volume over virtually every media outlet.

And the energy starvation! The suffocating regulations, prohibitions, taxes, and penalties! The choking off of new business and new sources of employment! It continues to get worse -- all financed from the top.

The people receiving these big money budgets and grants understand that everything depends upon their continued findings of "climate catastrophe." Anyone who falls off-message will be cut off, demonised, and left for dead -- figuratively speaking.

Washington DC is increasingly the place to be if you want to prosper in the US -- at least now, in the days of Obama. DC is the chokepoint, literally.

Now the race is on, between the ability of Americans to comprehend the enormous suicidal scam being pulled, and the ongoing processes which are turning the US into an Idiocracy. Precautions may be called for. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Source

Climate Change in the FY 2011 Budget (PDF)

Climate Models Flying Blind, Deaf, Dumb

Wired
Top leaders of the US and the EU are prepared to send their respective economies into a fatal tailspin on the basis of climate pseudo-science. Obama and his fellow cargo-cultists across the pond are willing to destroy the futures of their nations on the claims and declarations of climate modelers whose models omit the most salient movers of climate.

Clouds and water vapour, for example, may be the most crucial determinants of how the climate adapts to genuine climate forcings -- yet climate modelers haven't a clue how to deal with these crucial factors.

Another important factor -- black carbon soot -- is likely the primary determinant of melting of the Arctic ice and high latitude northern glaciers besides winds and currents, yet climate models have not been savvy about modeling this crucial driver of melting.

Just as crucial in the overall scheme of climate is the changing sun, and how the oceans react to changing solar activity. Models haven't a clue what to do with it.

Certainly recent winters are much colder with more snowfall than modelers have been predicting. And what's more, a recent paper claims that there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature changes.

Finally, there is dust. Climate models seem to miss larger dust particles called "silts" altogether. How can they expect to get anything right when they keep missing the most important drivers of climate, and emphasise things like CO2 which may actually be confounders, or "pseudo-drivers?"

Kok’s theory suggests that dust storms produce two to eight times more silt-sized particles than climatologists previously thought. Neglecting the boost in particles suggests that climate models, and even short-term weather models for dusty regions, are somewhat off. Until climate scientists better understand how dust changes over time, however, Kok said it’s tough to gauge the effects. _Wired

Dust, soot, clouds, ocean cycles, cyclic solar activity, water vapour, and more. Climate models even do a poor job with aerosols, as recent analyses are discovering. If climate models over-emphasise CO2 and under-emphasise the real drivers of climate, what are they good for -- other than providing a basis for huge bureaucracies, carbon taxes, cap and trade, and the strangulation of energy supplies and industry for the US and the EU?

Remember, if energy supplies are choked off, the underlying economy gets strangled. Startups and new technologies go elsewhere. Job prospects shrivel and die. Ever more people are unable to make mortgage payments or get away from dependency on government.

That seems to be what Obama and leaders of the EU want for their constituencies. But what do the people want? More debilitating cargo-cult pseudoscience from their witch-doctors in chief, or a fair chance to succeed in the world?

"Scam for the Ages" Makes Madoff Look Like Small Change

WUWT
Is it possible that you are the victim of a massive scam that makes the Bernie Madoff scam -- and all the other famous scams of history -- pale in comparison? It is not only possible -- it is true. In this incomprehensibly vast scam, there are many $billions to be made, and many $trillions to change hands over the next few decades. Clever chaps, these highly placed con-men.

A small number of humans shape and control the information flow that is accessible to most of the human race. Not coincidentally, this small number of persons is also tightly connected to even fewer persons who control most of the world's commercial, industrial, and governmental assets. If you do not take the trouble to step out of the mainstream of information flow, you are not likely to be aware of how your future prospects are being stolen from you without your consent.

Reducing man made carbon dioxide emissions is completely and utterly pointless if your goal is to change the future climate. On the other hand if you’re looking to make money from the trading of carbon allowances (carbon credits) than it makes a great deal of sense. If you’re looking to control the way the modern world makes energy then it makes perfect sense as well. If you’re trying to save the world from capitalists it makes it highly desirable to reduce “dirty” carbon emissions. If your mission is to extract money from developed nations and give it to those countries that have been robbed of their right to burn fossil fuels to grow their economies then it [may appear to be] the moral thing to do. If you are in the renewable energy business it makes perfect sense to support the reduction of carbon dioxide “pollution”. If you’re one of hundreds of environmental corporations whos mission is to save the planet at any cost, [and reduce the human population of Earth by at least 90%] then shutting down all sources of man made carbon dioxide is a war you must win. What cause could be nobler than to save the planet? _EnergyTribune

Bracketed comments in the quote above are editorial insertions by Al Fin

The frantic global rush to control human energy production -- and thus all human industry and commerce -- is based upon catastrophic climate models which project a "runaway greenhouse effect" from human CO2 emissions. But are the models believable? Are these pliable constructs of an infant science -- climatology -- trustworthy enough to base the entire human future upon their computations? There are reasons to strongly doubt the reliability of the models. From the paper: Anagnostopoulos, G. G., Koutsoyiannis, D., Christofides, A., Efstratiadis, A. & Mamassis, N. (2010) A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(7), 1094-1110 (via WUWT) we can see a few detailed comparisons between climate model outputs and actual observations.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global circulation models (GCM) are able to “reproduce features of the past climates and climate changes” (Randall et al., 2007, p. 601). Here we test whether this is indeed the case. We examine how well several model outputs fit measured temperature and rainfall in many stations around the globe. We also integrate measurements and model outputs over a large part of a continent, the contiguous USA (the USA excluding islands and Alaska), and examine the extent to which models can reproduce the past climate there. We will be referring to this as “comparison at a large scale”. _WUWT

When predicting the future it is best if your predictions range far beyond the lifetimes of anyone currently alive. That way, when you are proven wrong, no one then alive will particularly care one way or another -- certainly not you or your primary antagonists, who are long since dead. Climate modelers would like to have such luxury, but if they are to be taken at all seriously -- even by their fellows who are accepting generous and targeted research grants like themselves -- they must leave a way for the models to be tested, some tenuous connection between the models and real world observations. So far, the models appear to be highly biased and unreliable.

Is it possible that the models' outputs -- and the sensationalist headlines about climate change that face us on every front on every day of the year -- may be just a bit exaggerated?

The primary greenhouse gases listed in order of their contribution to the effect are: Water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. There are others but their concentrations in the atmosphere are so small they don’t contribute much effect. Water vapor and clouds are about 93% of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide about 5%, nitrous oxide about 0.95% and methane contributes about 0.36%. It’s the combined greenhouse warming from these gases that gives the earth its current average temperature.

Studies by Raval & Ramanathan (1989) estimated that the greenhouse effect of a cloudless atmosphere is 146 W/m2 (watts per square meter) for the average earth. They further pointed out that water vapor is accounting for most of this greenhouse effect, leaving about 8 W/m2 for the total amount of atmospheric CO2, i.e. some 5%. In addition the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate changes (IPCC) 4th assessment showed that 3% of the atmospheric CO2 comes from man made sources. Global gross primary production and respiration, land use changes plus CO2 from the oceans totals 213 gigatons of carbon exchanged each year between the earth/oceans and the atmosphere. The IPCC figure also shows man made carbon emissions to be about 7 gigatons bringing the total to 220 gigatons per year. So from this we can see that making energy from fossil fuels is adding about 3% of the carbon dioxide added to the air each year. From that the total human component of the greenhouse effect is therefore about 3% of the total carbon dioxide component of the greenhouse effect which is 5%. That gives us a value of 0.1% from man made carbon dioxide. If you think that’s a small number you’re right. _EnergyTribune

In reality, humans could reduce their CO2 contribution to virtually nothing, and the climate would not change its trajectory. But the human population would rapidly die off to a relatively low level -- which is precisely what legions of faux environmentalists would like to see occur. And a few well-placed individuals would reap many $billions (or more) of diverted resources, which would place them in a most elevated position with respect to the mere hundreds of millions of subsistence-level humans who might survive the energy starvation and dieoff.orgy.

US President Obama's staff is well-stocked with such faux environmentalist dieoff.orgiasts, and his presidential campaign was well-financed by individuals, corporations, and investment banks who are likely to do very well from carbon markets, trades, and regulations.

If you still believe in climate catastrophe from anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then you are not likely to change your point of view by looking at observations, data, or evidence which contradicts your point of view. You are one of the happy pawns to be sacrificed at will. But for the rest -- those who seek out information for yourselves, and do your own weighing of the evidence -- for you there is just a bit of fore-knowledge.

You can get involved in politics to attempt to slow the energy starvation reich's agenda a bit, or you can make personal preparations for what is coming, or both. Alternatively, you can try to get in on the big scam. Your move.

Extra Bonus: 120 Years of Media Coverage of Climate Catastrophe -- Hot and Cold. Climate is cyclic -- first hot, then cold, then hot again. Whichever direction the cycle is heading, it is always a catastrophe to the media and to credulous consumers of media crap.

The current Religious Orthodoxy of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming -- CAGW -- is easily converted to an orthodoxy of CAGC, if conditions warrent. The direction of climate temperature is irrelevant. It is the doom that counts.

World's Oceans, Coral Reefs, Feel Better After US Election

Al Fin recently attended a conference with representatives of all the world's oceans and seas, along with representatives from 600 of the world's largest coral reef formations, plankton communities, and kelp forests. After intensive discussions over the significance of the November 2010 elections in the US for the future of the world's oceans, and Al Fin's explanations of the ramifications of recent US elections for science and the oceans, the expressed conclusion of all attendees was one of massive relief.

Theoretical predictions indicate that coral calcification rates should decline as a result of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by as much as 40% by 2100. However, real-world observations indicate that elevated CO2 and elevated temperatures are having just the opposite effect. _ScienceandPublicPolicy

Of the four 'states' that CO2 can assume, carbondioxide CO2 is a mere 1%, bicarbonate HCO3 is 93% and carbonate CO3 8% . But the total amount of carbon dissolved in the oceans is just short of 40,000Gt (Pg) compared with less than 700Gt in the atmosphere. The sea is a massive carbon dioxide reservoir, in balance with an even more massive limestone reservoir of 40,000,000Gt carbon in marine sediments .

...It is thought that the carbondioxide in the sea exists in equilibrium with that of exposed rock and bottomsediment containing limestone CaCO3 (or sea shells for that matter). In other words, that the element calcium exists in equilibrium with CO3. But the concentration of Ca (411ppm) is 10.4 mmol/l and that of all CO2 species (90ppm) 2.05 mmol/l, of which CO3 is about 6%, thus 0.12 mmol/l. Thus the sea has a vast oversupply of calcium. It is difficult therefore to accept that decalcification could be a problem as CO3 increases. To the contrary, it should be of benefit to calcifying organisms. Thus the more CO2, the more limestone is deposited. This has also been borne out by measurements (Budyko 1977).

The bit missing at the beginning is that CO2 (atmosphere) <=> CO2 (sea water) or in other words, that the carbondioxide in the air is in balance with that in the surface water.

If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, then more of it will dissolve in the water, working all the way through the chemical reactions, to an increase in acidity and an increase in carbonate CO3. Scientists believe that the sea in pre-industrial times was 'saturated' relative to dissolved limestone, and that recent increases in CO2 have 'desaturated' the sea (beginning in the antarctic sea), with possible dire consequences for sea life. But we have observed that calcium skeletons dissolve back into what scientists call 'saturated' CO3. _SeaFriends

The oceans are not acid but alkaline, with an average pH of about 8.15 (0-7 being acid, 7-14 being alkaline). But they vary both in space and time, Arctic seas being less strongly alkaline than tropical, and some bays and reefs being actually acid because of underwater volcanic emissions. The dissolution of carbon dioxide in the oceans may lower the pH slightly to about 7.9 or 7.8 by the end of the century at the worst – still alkaline.

Environmentalists like to call this a 30% increase in acidity, because it sounds more scary than a 0.3 point (out of 14) decrease in alkalinity, but no matter. It is still well within the bounds of normal variation over space and time: the pH of the water intake at the Monterey aquarium varies by almost twice as much as this every month. The difference between the pH of the seas off Hawaii and Alaska is greater than this.

Enough numbers. Try chemistry. The scary reasoning rests on the argument that lower pH will mean less dissolved carbonate in the water. But a new paper from scientists in North Carolina proves what many scientists have long suspected, namely that corals and other species do not use carbonate as raw material to make their shells; they use bicarbonate. And dissolving carbon dioxide in water actually increases bicarbonate concentrations.

This may explain why study after study keeps finding that far from depressing growth rates of marine organisms, high but realistic levels of carbon dioxide either do not affect them or increase them. By far the most important calcifiers in the oceans are plankton called coccolithophores, which account for about a third of the total marine calcium carbonate manufacture. There is now strong evidence that coccolithophores are growing faster and larger as a result of human carbon dioxide emissions. Stands to reason if they use bicarbonate. _MattRidleyinTheTimes

The persistence of coral reefs through geologic time – when temperatures were as much as 10-15°C warmer than at present, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 2 to 7 times higher than they are currently – provides substantive evidence that these marine entities can successfully adapt to a dramatically changing global environment. Thus, the recent die-off of many corals cannot be due solely, or even mostly, to global warming or the modest rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration over the course of the Industrial Revolution. _CO2 Science

It is unusual for representatives from all the world's seas and oceans, plus the largest communities of corals and sea plants and plankton, to gather in one place at one time. But the recent distortions of ocean science by persons who should know better, forced concerned saltwater representatives into action.

When the seas and oceans learned that corrupt land and ocean scientists were concocting a fake crisis to enrich themselves, political sponsors, and collaborators, they decided that they simply must speak out against the travesty of distorted ocean science.

Al Fin interviewed the chairman of the proceedings after the conclusion of the conference:

Al Fin: Thank you for speaking with me today, Chairman GBR (Great Barrier Reef).

Chmn: It is certainly my pleasure, Al. And thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to attend our conference.

AF: I would not have missed it for all the world. Can you tell me why the oceans and ocean communities are so relieved by the findings of this conference?

Chmn: Well, Al, the oceans of the world have been very angry -- and you don't want to make them angry, Al, you really don't. They have been hearing all this news about humans killing the oceans with acid and CO2 until they were beginning to believe it. Having you here to explain the dishonesty of corrupt science, media, and politicians has helped us understand what is really going on.

AF: Certainly humans are doing some bad things to the seas and oceans, and for that I am sorry. But those are local problems, such as dumping toxins, untreated sewage, and other excess nutrients into the local ecosystems. Some harbours, bays, and estuaries are being stressed -- and that problem needs to be addressed.

Chmn: Yes, of course it does, Al. But all the hoopla about acid oceans and CO2 only distracts from the real problems you point out. If the crooked scientists are eating up all the resources which could have been used for remediation and finding solutions for real problems, it only hurts us more, Al.

AF: You are certainly correct. And that is why you should feel relief at the results of the November 2010 US elections. The criminal enterprise which could only do untold damage to both humans and the oceans has at least been slowed down by the election of less corrupt and less gullible elected representatives at the US federal and state levels.

Chmn: We understand all that now, thanks to you, Al. Thanks again for attending this important summit and conference.

AF: Thank you, Chairman GBR, for speaking with me for the benefit of Al Fin blog readers.

More from Matt Ridley here

Do You Trust the Media to Tell the Truth About Climate Doom?

As the global temperature has cycled from cold to warm to cold to warm again, the media has followed at almost lock step with it. But media cycles of climate doom, which mirror the climate cycles themselves, have roughly a ten to fifteen year time lag. It seems whenever the world warms up the number of global warming stories increases to match the trend; conversely when the climate cools down the media pull up on their long johns and warn of the next ice age. It is forthcoming for certain. _EnergyTribune

Natural climate cycles occur due to vast driving forces which are far more powerful than anything humans are capable of doing. But news media -- ever on the lookout for fantastic stories of impending crises -- will jump on any bandwagon that promises to sell advertising and subscriptions. As we have learned, there are always scientists who are willing to help create a faux catastrophe to make names for themselves -- and to get grants and ever-more publications. In this regard, "science" and the "news" media work hand in hand.

The oceans of the world store more than one thousand times more heat than the atmosphere. The vast majority of that heat is in the tropical waters. When the oceans warm so does the atmosphere; when they cool, global temperatures follow. The Pacific Ocean covers a third of the earth’s surface and exhibits a dominant impact on the global temperature. Around 1910 the tropical Pacific Ocean began to warm. The impacts of such a warming are not always readily apparent. It takes years for glaciers and sea ice to react to the gradual ocean warming. Such was the case in the 1910s and into the 1920s.

The huge social inertia generated by the ice age scare prior to 1910 continued to drive media fear stories of upcoming cold into the 1920s. Life was not as fast in those days and social change took place more slowly. On July 3, 1923 the Christian Science Monitor reported “Captain MacMillan left Wiscasset Maine announcing that one of the purposes of his cruise was to determine whether there was the beginning of another ice age as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate.” A year later on September 18, 1924 the New York Times declared the threat was real, saying “MacMillan reports signs of new ice age.” Earlier that year on April 6 the LA Times reported that Swedish scientist Rutger Sernander claimed there was “Scientific grounds for believing” that “When all winds will bring snow, the sun cannot prevail against the clouds and three winters will come in one, with no summer between.” Seems it was global cooling that was driving the headlines at that time.

Unknown to anyone during that time was the fact that the Pacific was beginning to warm and would continue to do so until the mid 1940s. Reacting to this ocean warmth the temperature of the earth began to rise as well. Concurrently the ice age stories began to fade from the headlines. Then on March 11, 1929, just five years later from the permanent winter story, the LA Times stunned its readers: “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer and that it will continue to get warmer.” On March 27, 1933 the New York Times headline read “The next ice age, if it is coming…is still a long way off.” In the same year meteorologist J. B. Kincer of the United States Weather Bureau published in the September Monthly Weather Review: “Wide-spread and persistent tendency towards warmer weather.” He noted out of 21 winters from 1912 to 1933 in Washington D. C. 18 were warmer than normal and all of the past 13 were mild.”

During the early 1920s the Atlantic Ocean began its cyclic 25 to 30 year warming trend. This warmer water combined with the warmer Pacific pumped up world temperature to the point where everyone began to take notice. By November 6, 1939 the Chicago Tribune published a story “Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise.” The story noted that “Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cities throughout the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend towards warmer climate in the last two decades.” They knew it was warming but not why.

On August 2, 1952 the New York Times reported that Eskimos were eating cod, a fish not previously in their diet. The following year the Times reported that studies confirmed that summers and winters were getting warmer and it was because the oceans were changing again. _EnergyTribune

Human science is barely learning the truth behind various overlapping natural drivers of climate change -- and the vastly complex terrestrial mechanism for converting the driving forces into climate. The overly-simplified, over-hyped crusade of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming orthodoxy, is an empty shell of pseudo-scientific blather. The deeper you look into politicised science, the nastier and more destructive it looks.

Problems With Scientific Research: How Much Of it Is Just Wrong?

Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results—and, lo and behold, they were getting them. We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously. “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis. “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.”

...as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed...the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem...an obsession with winning funding has gone a long way toward weakening the reliability of medical research. _theatlantic

In the opinion of Al Fin, those assertions are largely true. But not just for medical research. For all scientific research where funding is influenced by big money interests -- whether corporations, governments, or "philanthropic" organisations -- the issue of conscious and sub-conscious bias must be met head-on.

The problem is particularly acute in the field of climate science -- where $trillions are at stake. The severity of the problem was highlighted recently by the resignation of renowned and respected physicist Hal Lewis from the American Physical Society. Here is why Lewis resigned from the formerly prestigious society:

the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. _WUWT

In fact, the gut instinct of revulsion to mercenary science -- science corrupted by funding bias and influence seeking -- is clearly a better gauge of a true scientist than any degree of technical sophistication of research tools or supercomputer simulations. And yet climatology -- which is a newborn infant science in comparison to medical research -- may never escape the trap of politicised funding and publication selection in which it is snared.
Medical science is often biased at all stages by the desire of researchers and biomedical corporations for monetary gain. But the sheer amount of money at stake in climate science -- $trillions, as mentioned earlier -- dwarfs any profits ever to be gained by drug companies, medical insurance companies, or medical device companies. The gargantuan political influence combined with the relative tiny size of the climate science community, combines to provide the public with a thoroughly corrupted, biased, and unreliable look at global climate.

How many other areas of science share the same weaknesses? Follow the money. Big money interests (including governments) that get too deeply involved in the funding and publication process for any science, will introduce a corrupting influence on that science.

The dumbing down of schools from K-University does not help matters any. The replacement of meritocracy in the selection process for some graduate programs by affirmative action and other anti-meritocratic tools of political correctness, further degrades the grand enterprise of dispassionate scientific research.

All humans have their biases, which must be faced at every level of discovery. If human biases are ignored, or submerged beneath an overlying layer of "consensus" or political correctness, the end result of such an enterprise will be foul excrement.

Perhaps only a minority of researchers were succumbing to this bias, but their distorted findings were having an outsize effect on published research. To get funding and tenured positions, and often merely to stay afloat, researchers have to get their work published in well-regarded journals, where rejection rates can climb above 90 percent. Not surprisingly, the studies that tend to make the grade are those with eye-catching findings. But while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously. Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news? _theatlantic

PLOS Medicine 2005 Why Most Published Research Findings are False

PLOS Medicine 2008 Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science  

More: (via SDA_via_Maggie'sFarm)

1. 
   Whenever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts”
2. 
   Encourage substantive debate on the “evidence” by knowledgable proponents of all points of view.
3. 
   Arguments from authority carry little weight as “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that there are no authorities; at most; there are “experts”.
4. 
   Spin a variety of hypotheses. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each. The ones that survive are the ones to do in depth study on.
5. 
   Do not become attached to any hypothesis just because it’s yours. Find reasons for rejecting all, including your own, hypothesis.
6. 
   Quantify. If whatever you are explaining has a measure, quantify it so that measurement is more possible.
7. Vague hypothesis, or those difficult to quantify will be the most difficult to prove or disprove.
8. 
   If there is a chain argument, then each and every link must work, including the premise.
9. 
   Use Occam’s Razor; which is to choose the hypothesis that explains the data in the simplest terms.
10. 
     Ask: is the Hypothesis testable and falsifiable. Hypothesis that are not testable are not worth much. Could you duplicate accurately, at least theoretically, the hypothesis?

__Carl Sagan

Women More Easily Blinded by Science?

A study from Michigan State University's Sociology Department has found that women have been more easily conned into believing in "a scientific consensus for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" and the impending climate death of the Earth, than have men. This, despite the fact that most top rank climate scientists are men, and presumably members of the oppressive patriarchy of old white males.

Once the ClimateGate emails became public knowledge (see here and here), it should have been obvious to most thinking persons that the methods being used by the controlling inner circle of IPCC affiliated climate science were not appropriate, nor were they in keeping with good scientific practises. The use of denial of access to data, pressuring scientific publications not to publish studies critical of the "consensus of the insiders", the denial of tenure to academics skeptical of the catastrophist viewpoint, the willingness to ignore scientific standards of information exchange -- even to the point of breaking national laws of freedom of information -- should have been enough to tip off any thoughtful individual. Clearly something stinks inside the sanctum sanctorum of mainstreamed catastrophist climate science.

Who is more likely to pick up on the huge contradictions inside the rapidly shredding catastrophist camp -- thinking men or thinking women? It is impossible to know without actually checking. Michigan State sociologists have checked, and found that women are not picking up on the discrepancies. Why not?

Why do such women put their trust in authority figures, even when these figures have proven themselves untrustworthy?

More on this topic later.

Bonus: 5 reasons why water vapour feedback may not be positive, [which would destroy virtually all modern climate models, if true.]

AND a PDF study looking at cloud feedback (PDF) [which also has the potential to obliterate the results of most climate models].