Oh man, this gets tiresome…
From this morning’s ‘Morning Edition’ on NPR:
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
Or, if they were a wee bit more open-minded (as scientists are supposed to be) it could mean that the data is in direct conflict with computer models driven by pseudo-scientific, politically-contaminated assumptions about a grand hypothesis un-provable in anyone’s lifetime. I.e., it could mean, as many of us have been saying for some time, that global warming (at least the dire warnings about the catastrophic, man-made variety) are well… how to put this nicely… completely bogus.
Question: why is it, when the data says things are cooling off scientists (according to NPR) are “not quite understanding” whereas when the data say things are warming up, they understand things with so much perfection and confidence that some seek to end all debate? Just asking…
The NPR piece continues:
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record.
Well, no. That’s not true. Let me say that again: it is flat-out false. Wrong. A lie. Unless one takes the word ’some’ to refer to one year, 2006 and ignore the very hot years (in the 1930’s) before global carbon emissions amounted to much of anything.
But that’s at best a preposterous exaggeration on NPR’s part. There is no spin or opinion involved on this one. NPR got it’s facts wrong. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking it so if you only listen to NPR, the real data are very different after a very public but not very well reported NASA correction due to a Y2K bug last year:
Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.
I’m not sure what else there is to say except that facts are sticky things and that intellectual honesty involves looking at all of them and changing one’s mind. The fact that the oceans are cooling, that they are responsible for 80-90% of global heat variance (as the NPR piece goes on to say — correctly) and that the surface data have been corrected to show nothing particularly remarkable leads to one overwhelming and inescapable conclusion… with $B’s and many political and ’scientific’ careers on the line if it proves to be true.
[...] [Note: not merely the aggregate change over the course of ten years, which ought to be enough evidence to make the scientific dialogue more balanced, but in every single one of those ten years. Colder. And, to the degree that people may argue about surface data -- which altitude, city heat-island effects, etc. -- the data from the deep oceans, which everyone agrees drives 80-90% of climate, are unequivocal: Cooling.] [...]
By: It Isn’t Denial If What Is Denied Isn’t True « New Wineskins on November 6, 2008
at 7:52 am
[...] Hmm… what kind of evidence would we look for to confirm that a) the sun has a much bigger influence on climate than the CAGW crowd would have you believe and, b) this is a massively complex system that we’re incapable of understanding, much less predicting, much less prescribing and funding a $45T solution for? How about a fresh, multi-year data set from three thousand deep ocean probes? [...]
By: Forecast This « New Wineskins on June 10, 2008
at 12:01 pm
[...] there’s the irony that ethanol programs do nothing for carbon emissions (not that anyone should care … or if they do care, they should maybe encourage more carbon emissions, lest we [...]
By: The ‘Unintended Consequences Hall of Fame’: Ethanol Subsidies « New Wineskins on April 25, 2008
at 2:51 pm
[...] other words, as I’ve been saying for some time about the belief in catastrophic, anthropogenic climate chan… (but could just as well say about most elements of the secularist, anti-religious world view): it [...]
By: Secularism is a Religion « New Wineskins on April 9, 2008
at 7:57 am
You might want to look at this site:
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/dalton_minimum_returns/
If sunspot cycle 24 doesn’t show up soon, we will have broken a pattern of over a century. The last time this happened it got cooler fast.
By: MaxedOutMama on March 24, 2008
at 8:03 pm
Quickbeam – While I’m sure some of that is true at the margins (and maybe more) I like to think that a lot of scientists are still truly curious and motivated to pursue interesting ’stuff’. I don’t know if that’s a majority or not, but in working with a very large government research lab some time back, the problem was not the scientists’ kow-towing to their pay-masters but the complete inability of said pay-masters to keep any control whatsoever on what was being done. It was the proverbial herding of cats. Yeah, a lot of it was still big-grant based, but there was a lot of slack in the system for the scientists to ‘mess around’.
By: ultraguy on March 20, 2008
at 1:23 pm
I wonder if the cost to do experiments is now the driver for science. IOW it didn’t take a lot of money to test theories 300 years ago. Today it takes large funding. And much of that funding comes either from gov’t or corporations. Both of whom have vested interest in developing science theories that would support that which they already want to prove or accomplish.
So if you as a scientist want to study some pet project of yours you have to be willing to do XYZ for the gov’t/corp. entity and then you can keep the equipment after their work is done. But the catch is you have to “find” results that will please the gov’t/corporate wonks.
I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but it’s what I suspect.
By: quickbeamoffangorn on March 20, 2008
at 2:51 am
[...] Ultraguy at New Wineskins rips open the spin and the politics. [...]
By: Taken Aback By Morning Edition « In Other Words on March 19, 2008
at 8:22 pm
Ultraguy,
I hate to join the “me too” chorus, but…
ME TOO!
I didn’t quite pick up on NPR’s spinning so quickly as you did. I was a bit more preoccupied with their hemming and hawing, and their attempts to maintain their old understanding of the science.
Oh wait. That *is* spinning.
By: joebuckley on March 19, 2008
at 8:19 pm