Thread: Key 'climategate' scientist cleared of wrongdoing

So, to summarize, the general consensus is:

1) My local weatherman does not give me the right forecast, therefore all climate science is invalid.
2) A minority of a certain group, regardless of relative expertise or the dubiousness of their motivations, can indefinitely deny a certain theory, largely without factual basis, and this is a valid method of completely negating the peer-reviewed research of the majority.
3) Penn State university is selling out its academic principles because it would lose 1/3 of its funding if global warming was a sham.
4) It is impossible to compare two sets of data that didn't have the exact same inputs. Statistical analysis is in the realm of magic, genies, and myths, and any who claim it can be used in science are madmen.
5) "Al Gore"

By the "logic" I'm seeing here, I'm surprised you guys actually believe there was a moon landing. After all, there are many out there who were skeptical that it ever took place and trust me, there are a lot of scientists up in NASA and at various university programs who stood to make a lot of money if the public believed that we landed on the moon. It's things like that that make you go "hmmm" eh fellas? Those damn scientists are up to no good!

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Pote i think your forgeting that the 2 guys that USE to run the national hurricane center ran it off of data provided by the scientists your so proud of. What happened to them? Oh yeah they were fired because companies were spending millions of dollars a year in prep for the season for none to show up year after year.

So the number of named storms has increased globally. So what what does it prove? The charts are to say the least incomplete. We've only been using weather radar since 1959 and it wasn't that strong of a system to begin with. So now we can cover the globe with weather radar and look what happens. All of a sudden we see storms that need names that we didn't even know were there before. It's a weak arguement to say the numbers have doubled knowing full well how far radar systems have come since the time frame being used.

What 2 guys are you referring to, that got fired for forecasting?

Naming of storms only occurs, after it hits the threshold to be considered a tropical storm. More named storms, means more storms, its a simple 1 to 1 ratio. Part of the prediction of the IPCC was an increase in the severity of storms as well as the quantity of storms. Trends from the 1960s, and 1970s to know support it. In the past 35-45 years, there has been an increase in the amount of storms, and the severity. All the while that we had satellites in the air, weather radar and hurricane hunter aircraft (back in the 60's and 70's). Has it gotten better? Absolutely. But to claim this:

It's a weak arguement to say the numbers have doubled knowing full well how far radar systems have come since the time frame being used.

is absolutely ridiculous. The GOES satellite system was launching satellites into orbit in 1974, giving us un-paralleled knowledge of storms and their location. SINCE the 1970s...the amount of hurricanes has increased. The GOES satellite is among the first to track the cyclones. Radar is useful, but hardly the only technology used for tracking the formation and movement of these storm systems.

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Originally Posted by Potemkine

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Originally Posted by Potemkine

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Oh well as long as a school cleared it all up then i guess there was never a problem. LOL does nothing to restore credit to a long standing tainted field.

Tainted for absolutely no reason other than the conspiracy theorists throwing around wild, unsubstantiated accusations.

Or it could be because the whole thing is a theory based off of something that has always been true with number that have to be fudged up to begin with. Climate has always changed and we haven't been here long enough researching it to make a valid call about it.

Tainted because numbers were "fudged"? What was "fudged"?

I disagree about our time spent researching climate. The science may be in its infancy, however we have a pretty good idea about just what the hell is happening, and more importantly, WHY.

So if in 30 years, we are all still on the forums, and we are witnessing an increased average temperature, more severe storms more frequently, etc. What are you going to say?

And to preempt your next question, I would be more than happy to say I was wrong. I would be ecstatic to say I was wrong, because that would mean our predictions were wrong.

Ok i believe the term you and soy used was tweaked but if i get bored enough i'll go back and find it. What am i going to say in 30 years if the the temp is higher and there are more storms? I guess i wont have to worry about it becuase the current trend is lower temps and storms have been about the same as they have been for many many years. Every 3 to 5 years there is always a good one that rips some shit up.

What predictions did the science community get right? I'm still waiting for our guardian radar to get the next day right on rain or shine. If we cant guess a week in advance correctly without fail then assuming we can guess 100 years from now is just absurd.

Tweaked? Yeah, the scientists manually tweaked the results of certain data runs, stressing different variables to ensure that the trends they were seeing were in fact, anthropogenic, and not natural.

People remember the times that the forecasts were wrong, far more than when they were correct. For 3 weeks, check the weather forecast for a certain spot, a day in advance and confirm the result of the forecasted weather. Just remember though, forecasts are for general areas, typically, about a couple square miles. I'm sure that you'll find that the forecasts are correct far more often then you give them credit for.

Originally Posted by Anti-Squeaker

Fear not fellow conservatives, I have brought reinforcements!


Suddenly, a wild Texan appears!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoF39r3MDH8

Yes, yes, I see it now....It snowed....in December....it MUST be a myth then! If it was global WARMING, why is it snowing RIGHT NOW huh? Gee Obama, you almost pulled that wool over my eyes. Trying to socialize big business, and make the world into your own Communist Playground! Good thing I listen to an unbiased, not named news source to tell ME the truth.

if anyone actually thinks i'm serious, they are dumb.

That video made me angry. I am a hair's width away from going to that video and shooting him a link to my mammoth post of science. Yeah...you know which one I am talking about. The one that's a fucking skyscraper of text and graphics instead of just a "wall". Then again...he probably wouldn't understand a single thing I wrote.

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

...
Ok i believe the term you and soy used was tweaked
...

OK, dude: Sometimes, when huge quantities of data are used to model a system, we might need to eliminate some variables or inflate some variables in order to see certain "pictures" to help us understand what is happening.

Read those emails; what "decline" are they using the "nature trick" to hide? A decline in dissolved oxygen in a peat bog sample that is affecting the data they are trying to collect for a tiny fragment of a huge puzzle? A decline in photosynthesis occurring in a time frame relevant to carbon dated samples from an ancient forest fire they are trying to get sample data from? What? You have NO idea what they were talking about; none of the people who blew that out of proportion did. They, like you, committed a common logical fallacy: Confirming the consequent.

IF they were hiding a decline in global average temperature from the public, the dialogue in the email is one way they might talk about it (without actually saying it). Well they said the sentence that might possibly be one of the things they could say if they were hiding the data, THEN they must be doing that.

If A then B; B, therefore A.

Or they could have been doing any of thousands of manipulations required to understand data collected.

If X then B. If Y then B. If Z then B. B, therefore ... ?

See the problem with the logic used?


I know in any statistical analysis, especially one relying on data from many sources, each involving it's own manipulations to draw data from, many statistical "tricks" are employed. And that is a word I use: Tricks. Viewing phenomena via the geometric-mean instead of arithmetic-mean can be a "trick"; Eliminating a confounding variable using Multiple Analysis Of Variance (MANOVA) software can be a "trick"; looking at a graph of the derivative of time-sequence phenomena can be a "trick." The fact is: A few people took a couple of emails completely out of context and said "if they were doing ____, this is one sentence they might say when talking about it! They said the sentence, so that is what they must be doing it!"

I use tricks all the time: I used a trick with the dot-product of two vectors and their combined magnitudes to work around an annoying physics problem involving three angles that could have been mathmatically much uglier and longer. I used a trick in C++ to avoid writing a giant pile of code to accomplish a task that a custom library already had a function for. Crushing the garlic clove to break the skin off rather than picking it off with my fingernails is a trick I employ frequently. People use tricks all the time. Analysis of systems regularly require the elimination of outliers, confounds and other variables in order to see certain data.


If people believe the word "trick" can only mean scientists are fooling the public... well... let's just say my faith in mankind's ability to have a successful future grows weaker.