Climate Research Unit email scandal - AKA 'Climategate'

[reefedjib]

Yes, thank you for explaining things I've already explained. You're wrong on a couple things, though. The data wasn't manipulated. The original data is still there. I was able to find it in two minutes on google. The change was a cosmetic one. We know the instrumental record is better, because it's a direct measurement and all of the independent temperature proxies match it.

That is not the original data. The tree ring data is manipulated into temperature data, derived data. The instumental record goes back maybe 200 years and the coverage is minimal for most of those years.

I don't see this "matching perfectly". There are cyclic divergences throughout the record. It looks as if the average temperature matches, but that is likely an effect of the manipulation. It does show a massive divergence after 1961 that is unexplained and which the CRU scientists were trying to hide.

Also, you're still way overestimating the scope of this so-called manipulation. Tree-ring temperature reconstructions are not particularly important to the big picture of climate change. There are other temperature proxies, and they all agree with eachother. Then there's the simple, unassailable physics of how carbon dioxide absorbs the longwave infrared spectrum.

You are overestimating the warming. It is less than a degree Celcius and it is only recently. On top of that you assert that man made carbon dioxide is to blame, and then you want to restrict the economies of the world, which means the US, to limit supposed carbon dioxide emissions. It's bull****.

 

[Deuce]

Yes, it is less than 1 degree C. So far. ~.7C if I remember right? When did I claim it was higher?

And yes, man-made carbon is to blame. CO2 is the only forcing that accounts for what we've seen, and man is the net source of the increase in CO2. (nature is actually a CO2 sink. every spring when the plants grow)

So, yes, I do want to "restrict the economies of the world." If, by "restrict," you mean "push towards sources of energy that do not emit CO2 because that is better for our long-term economic, security, and ecological well-being."

Child pornography creates jobs, that doesn't mean it's something we should consider.

edit: And you still haven't shown any actual evidence that the data was manipulated. That email is out of context and can be interpreted to mean a lot of things.

Edit2: And how come you didn't respond to the "bad data" only existing in the high-northern lattitudes?

 

[ptif219]

Yes, it is less than 1 degree C. So far. ~.7C if I remember right? When did I claim it was higher?

And yes, man-made carbon is to blame. CO2 is the only forcing that accounts for what we've seen, and man is the net source of the increase in CO2. (nature is actually a CO2 sink. every spring when the plants grow)

So, yes, I do want to "restrict the economies of the world." If, by "restrict," you mean "push towards sources of energy that do not emit CO2 because that is better for our long-term economic, security, and ecological well-being."

Child pornography creates jobs, that doesn't mean it's something we should consider.

edit: And you still haven't shown any actual evidence that the data was manipulated. That email is out of context and can be interpreted to mean a lot of things.

Edit2: And how come you didn't respond to the "bad data" only existing in the high-northern lattitudes?

Wrong history shows that climate change has been on going forever. That is why we see the record breaking heat breaking records from the late 1800's and early 1900's.

You want socialism and to break our economy for bad science and science that is pushed for political agendas

 

[Deuce]

Wrong history shows that climate change has been on going forever. That is why we see the record breaking heat breaking records from the late 1800's and early 1900's.

The 20 hottest years on record have all occured within the last 30 years.

Besides, individual years aren't really important, the trend is important. Year to year sees a lot of variance.

Edit: Correction only 19 of the 20 hottest years are in the last 30. The 18th hottest is actually 1944

 

[ptif219]

The 20 hottest years on record have all occured within the last 30 years.

Thats funny then why have those years broken records from the late 1800's and early 1900's?

Then of course the faulty record keeping and bad placement of recording stations influence this.


Watts Up With That?: 1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA

 

[Deuce]

Thats funny then why have those years broken records from the late 1800's and early 1900's?

Then of course the faulty record keeping and bad placement of recording stations influence this.


Watts Up With That?: 1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA

This argument doesn't make any sense. It used to be colder. Now it's warmer. That's why we're breaking old records. 2010 looks like it will be a new high. Because it's getting even warmer.

This clearly displays a warming trend. Numbers used to be lower. Now they're higher.

The temperatures you linked in that Watts article are United States temperature records. The important numbers are the Global temperature records. The United States is only 2% of the world's surface area.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm

 

[reefedjib]

And yes, man-made carbon is to blame. CO2 is the only forcing that accounts for what we've seen, and man is the net source of the increase in CO2. (nature is actually a CO2 sink. every spring when the plants grow)

That is your opinion. There is no conclusive evidence. This is the issue which climate warmers are trying to silence the critics. That is not how science is done. That is how politics is done. It is no longer a scientific issue - it is a political issue.

So, yes, I do want to "restrict the economies of the world." If, by "restrict," you mean "push towards sources of energy that do not emit CO2 because that is better for our long-term economic, security, and ecological well-being."

How can you do this with no evidence? You seek to destroy the 1st world, because China and India are certainly not contemplating coming off their love of coal and oil. Carbon tax and trade is a tax on our energy industry for the benefit of the government. We will pay that tax, should it come to pass. A bunch of assholes.

Child pornography creates jobs, that doesn't mean it's something we should consider.

Non-sequitur.

edit: And you still haven't shown any actual evidence that the data was manipulated. That email is out of context and can be interpreted to mean a lot of things.

Non-temperature data is manipulated BY DEFINITION into temperature data.

Edit2: And how come you didn't respond to the "bad data" only existing in the high-northern lattitudes?

I am not a climate scientist. It is not my responsibility to explain these discrepancies. It is illuminating that the evidence is not well understood by climate scientists who claim global warming is caused by man.

 

[Middleground]

Thats funny then why have those years broken records from the late 1800's and early 1900's?

Then of course the faulty record keeping and bad placement of recording stations influence this.


Watts Up With That?: 1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA

What does what you linked have to do with GLOBAL warming? You do understand the difference between GLOBAL and the just US, right?

 

[Deuce]

That is your opinion. There is no conclusive evidence. This is the issue which climate warmers are trying to silence the critics. That is not how science is done. That is how politics is done. It is no longer a scientific issue - it is a political issue.

Uhh, there's loads of evidence. The physics of CO2's absorption spectrum is unassailable. Then there's the strong historical correlation of CO2 to temperature. (although usually as a feedback rather than an initial forcing, because CO2 doesn't often spontaneously enter the atmosphere) Then there's the satellite data. We've been measuring both incoming and outgoing radiation for a few decades now. The outgoing radiation is dropping in the exact same spectrum that CO2 absorbs. Where, exactly, do you think that energy is going?

Just because you aren't personally aware of the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The CO2 -> Temperature link was first correlated more than a century ago. A lot of research has been done on the subject.

can you do this with no evidence? You seek to destroy the 1st world, because China and India are certainly not contemplating coming off their love of coal and oil. Carbon tax and trade is a tax on our energy industry for the benefit of the government. We will pay that tax, should it come to pass. A bunch of assholes.

This research spans more than a century, dozens of fields, thousands of scientists. No evidence? By the way, both India and China are investing heavily in renewable sources. They aren't stupid, basic math does not escape them. If India and China used the per-capita resources that the US does, we'd need two planet Earths to support that level of consumption. If we don't do something, we're going to be twenty years behind the technology and infrastructure curve when it comes to the inevitable shift to renewables. How's THAT going to affect our economy?

Non-sequitur.

But it illustrates a point. Not all jobs are worthwhile. Some things, *gasp*, are more important than money.

Non-temperature data is manipulated BY DEFINITION into temperature data.

So your argument is purely semantics, then. Ok. It's called a temperature proxy. We didn't have thermometers two thousand years ago, but knowing the temperature at the time is useful for further research. Scientists figured out a bunch of different ways to estimate global temperatures back then. Paleoclimatology, it's called. The way they do that is they come up with a method for doing that, come up with what they believe is a good fit to temperatures, and run tests against the known instrumental record. If the fit is good enough, they test it a few hundred more times. If not, either the method is flawed or the algorithm needs a tweak, depending on how severe the deviations are. It's science.

I am not a climate scientist. It is not my responsibility to explain these discrepancies. It is illuminating that the evidence is not well understood by climate scientists who claim global warming is caused by man.

There has never been scientific study of any kind that came up flawless. I already linked a paper that discusses these discrepancies. Did you read it? Even if you assume that tree-ring temperature reconstructions are bad, you still have other methods and the mountains of other evidence supporting this research. A rough analogy: The yield estimates for some nuclear bombs were off, therefore all nuclear research is invalidated. Sounds stupid, right? This is basically what you're saying about climate science.

 

[ptif219]

This argument doesn't make any sense. It used to be colder. Now it's warmer. That's why we're breaking old records. 2010 looks like it will be a new high. Because it's getting even warmer.

This clearly displays a warming trend. Numbers used to be lower. Now they're higher.

The temperatures you linked in that Watts article are United States temperature records. The important numbers are the Global temperature records. The United States is only 2% of the world's surface area.

1934 is the hottest year on record

No the records show it was hot before oil

 

[ptif219]

Another article revealing truth on panel that exonerated climate gate


Pat Michaels: The Climategate Whitewash Continues: Don't Believe the 'Independent Reviews' About Goings on at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - WSJ.com

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here." Last week "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review," commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.


Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that "Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find."

No links? One of the panel's four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton's school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia "adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity."

This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others—one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State "determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking. In a famous email of May 29, 2008, Phil Jones, director of East Anglia's CRU, wrote to Mr. Mann, under the subject line "IPCC & FOI," "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report]? Keith will do likewise . . . can you also email Gene [Wahl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise."

Mr. Jones emailed later that he had "deleted loads of emails" so that anyone who might bring a Freedom of Information Act request would get very little. According to New Scientist writer Fred Pearce, "Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this."

 

[reefedjib]

Uhh, there's loads of evidence. The physics of CO2's absorption spectrum is unassailable. Then there's the strong historical correlation of CO2 to temperature. (although usually as a feedback rather than an initial forcing, because CO2 doesn't often spontaneously enter the atmosphere) Then there's the satellite data. We've been measuring both incoming and outgoing radiation for a few decades now. The outgoing radiation is dropping in the exact same spectrum that CO2 absorbs. Where, exactly, do you think that energy is going?

Just because you aren't personally aware of the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The CO2 -> Temperature link was first correlated more than a century ago. A lot of research has been done on the subject.





This research spans more than a century, dozens of fields, thousands of scientists. No evidence? By the way, both India and China are investing heavily in renewable sources. They aren't stupid, basic math does not escape them. If India and China used the per-capita resources that the US does, we'd need two planet Earths to support that level of consumption. If we don't do something, we're going to be twenty years behind the technology and infrastructure curve when it comes to the inevitable shift to renewables. How's THAT going to affect our economy?



But it illustrates a point. Not all jobs are worthwhile. Some things, *gasp*, are more important than money.



So your argument is purely semantics, then. Ok. It's called a temperature proxy. We didn't have thermometers two thousand years ago, but knowing the temperature at the time is useful for further research. Scientists figured out a bunch of different ways to estimate global temperatures back then. Paleoclimatology, it's called. The way they do that is they come up with a method for doing that, come up with what they believe is a good fit to temperatures, and run tests against the known instrumental record. If the fit is good enough, they test it a few hundred more times. If not, either the method is flawed or the algorithm needs a tweak, depending on how severe the deviations are. It's science.





There has never been scientific study of any kind that came up flawless. I already linked a paper that discusses these discrepancies. Did you read it? Even if you assume that tree-ring temperature reconstructions are bad, you still have other methods and the mountains of other evidence supporting this research. A rough analogy: The yield estimates for some nuclear bombs were off, therefore all nuclear research is invalidated. Sounds stupid, right? This is basically what you're saying about climate science.

I started my participation in this thread objecting to the use of tree-ring data as an accurate temperature proxy. Poor correlation in the earlier part of last century, plus a large deviation in the later part of last century and this century is evident that the mapping from tree-ring data to temperature is inexact. Their solution for the later deviation is completely bogus - it is a statistical technique and does not preserve the original mapping.

I do think other temperature proxies with decent correlation of mapping exists. I do think we are seeing a warming period these last few decades. I think it is cyclic.

I do not think it is caused by man's use of petrochemicals. The arguments being made for this are political and the dissenting viewpoint is being actively suppressed.

China and India are the fastest growing users of petrochemicals. They are also looking into renewables since they operate on the margins of sufficient energy production - the demand is growing faster than their increasing use of petrochemicals can supply them with energy. They are also expanding nuclear. They are the bigger polluters.

We should not change our use of petrochemicals - we should expand it. More drilling in shallow water, development of CNG and expansion of nuclear power.

 

[Deuce]

No the records show it was hot before oil

...and after oil it got even hotter.
Just because temperature can change without mankind's input doesn't mean mankind is incapable of affecting temperature. That's just plain faulty logic.

I started my participation in this thread objecting to the use of tree-ring data as an accurate temperature proxy. Poor correlation in the earlier part of last century, plus a large deviation in the later part of last century and this century is evident that the mapping from tree-ring data to temperature is inexact. Their solution for the later deviation is completely bogus - it is a statistical technique and does not preserve the original mapping.

Tree-ring data is a fine proxy, in all cases except one set of data: high-northern lattitude readings over the last few decades. In all other regions and all other time periods, it fits fine. Like I said before, no research is ever free of bad data. Especially in a field this complicated, contamination will happen. Depleted ozone is one of several theories to describe this, and I already linked a paper discussing this issue, which I take it you didn't read.

I do think other temperature proxies with decent correlation of mapping exists. I do think we are seeing a warming period these last few decades. I think it is cyclic.

How cyclic? Temperature has steadily increased for a century now. When does the down cycle start and what is the mechanism that causes it? Saying "it's cyclic" without discussing a mechanism is just sticking your head in the sand. I'll rule a few out for you:
1) The sun's long-term trend is a slow, steady increase in output, as is normal for a star. Within that long-term trend is a shorter cycle, an 11-year solar output cycle that is easily measured and accounted for. The sun's output does not account for the current warming, we've seen warming during time periods where solar output decreased. Since it's an 11-year cycle, clearly a 100-year warming trend wouldn't be a result of it.
2) El Nino/La Nina is on an even shorter cycle than the sun. 5-ish years, if I remember right. Also, if the ocean storing more heat was the cause of a century-long warming trend, how come it never did this before? What changed to make the ocean start absorbing more heat than it used to?
3) Continental configuration changes heat storage, as land an ocean absorb and reflect heat differently. The configuration of continents does not appreciably change in a 100-year period.
4) Orbital mechanics do not change on a 100-year cycle. The earth's orbital wobble is believed to be a primary driver in the cycle of ice ages, but this is a cycle that occurs over several thousand years, not 100.
5) Water vapor is not a forcing, it's a feedback. Water vapor contributes the majority of the greenhouse effect, but the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is determined by and limited by temperature. (Meteorology 101, Dew Point)

So, what mechanism is causing this warming trend?

I do not think it is caused by man's use of petrochemicals. The arguments being made for this are political and the dissenting viewpoint is being actively suppressed.

No they aren't. They're addressed all the time. A paper was released just last month talking about how the author believed CFC's to be the primary driver of temperature change instead of CO2. It's already been addressed by the scientific community. Hell, think up any argument against AGW. Anything you can come up with. I bet it's in this list.
Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says
You have no evidence of active suppression of dissent. One email by one guy does not prove that any action has even been taken, let alone action that somehow globally suppresses all dissent even in the age of the internet.

Here's a simple explanation of some of the empirical evidence:
We can directly measure the longwave infrared spectrum and how it gets absorbed. This happens with measurements taken on the ground and measurements taken by satellites. In direct correlation to rising CO2 levels, the outgoing level of radiation in the spectrum that CO2 absorbs has been decreasing. This is what the greenhouse effect is, absorption of the longwave infrared radiation that the earth emits back into space. At the same time, the "downward" radiation in this same spectrum has been increasing, as the outgoing radiation that gets absorbed gets re-emitted in all directions.
So, the atmosphere is absorbing and trapping more and more energy as CO2 goes up. We see this same effect in the spectrum covered by other greenhouse gases: water vapor, CFC's, methane, etc, but these have not changed to the degree that CO2 has. That energy that gets absorbed has to go somewhere. It's heating the earth.

 

[Deuce]

Another article revealing truth on panel that exonerated climate gate


Pat Michaels: The Climategate Whitewash Continues: Don't Believe the 'Independent Reviews' About Goings on at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - WSJ.com

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here." Last week "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review," commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.


Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that "Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find."

No links? One of the panel's four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton's school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia "adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity."

This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others—one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State "determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking. In a famous email of May 29, 2008, Phil Jones, director of East Anglia's CRU, wrote to Mr. Mann, under the subject line "IPCC & FOI," "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report]? Keith will do likewise . . . can you also email Gene [Wahl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise."

Mr. Jones emailed later that he had "deleted loads of emails" so that anyone who might bring a Freedom of Information Act request would get very little. According to New Scientist writer Fred Pearce, "Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this."

Spin and speculation combined with several outright lies. Typical of the skeptics camp.

 

[reefedjib]

I don't see the glaciation cycle in you list of causes. The idea that we fully understand the causes of climate change is complete hubris.

The fact remains that this is political.

 

[marywollstonecraft]

You mean the people that give their own a pass on lies, manipulation and deceptions. Who would think that scientist would disagree with those working on the same project.

Global Warming Propagandaist exonerate their own. This is credible or even unexpected?

LOL ...there is no cure for you.

 

[Deuce]

I don't see the glaciation cycle in you list of causes. The idea that we fully understand the causes of climate change is complete hubris.

The fact remains that this is political.

Glaciation requires a temperature change. Temperature change requires a mechanism. Also, this:

4) Orbital mechanics do not change on a 100-year cycle. The earth's orbital wobble is believed to be a primary driver in the cycle of ice ages, but this is a cycle that occurs over several thousand years, not 100.

Are you suggesting that the "cycle of glaciation" is responsible for this much temperature change in a 100-year period?

The FACT remains that this is based in science. You're the one making it political. Reality does not have a liberal bias. If you want to counter a scientific argument you're going to have to at least try and use science to do it.

What is the mechanism that causes this cycle you're referring to? When you boil it down, the earth's temperature isn't that complicated a system. There's only one source of heat: The sun. The other variable is how well the earth stores the sun's heat. We already know the sun has not caused this particular warming period, so that leaves the heat storage. What is trapping the heat, if not CO2?

Especially considering that we have direct, empirical evidence that the outgoing radiation in CO2's spectrum is decreasing, meaning that it is getting absorbed instead of escaping into space. Funny how skeptics never address that.

 

[reefedjib]

Glaciation requires a temperature change. Temperature change requires a mechanism. Also, this:


Are you suggesting that the "cycle of glaciation" is responsible for this much temperature change in a 100-year period?

Yes. It is not much temperature change, only 0.7 degrees.

The FACT remains that this is based in science. You're the one making it political. Reality does not have a liberal bias. If you want to counter a scientific argument you're going to have to at least try and use science to do it.

That's laughable. I am not the one making it political. The climate change proponents, who are claiming that AGW is responsible for warming, and using half-baked science to promote policy changes of a SEVERE nature are the ones making it political. Not me.

 

[Deuce]

Yes. It is not much temperature change, only 0.7 degrees.

And I suppose you have some evidence to back that up? Some sort of calculations, perhaps?
No? I thought not. The reason is your math is off by a couple orders of magnitude. .7 degrees in 100 years is way, way too fast for the orbit to have caused it. The earth's axial precession is on a cycle of 26,000 years or so. The elliptical orbit rotates on a 21,000 year cycle, although I'm not sure that could actually change temperatures, just shift the seasons to different times of the year. A couple other factors change but if I remember right they're on a 200,000+ year cycle.
Besides, the earth's orbit is something we can easily monitor and account for. It's not the source of the current warming.

That's laughable. I am not the one making it political. The climate change proponents, who are claiming that AGW is responsible for warming, and using half-baked science to promote policy changes of a SEVERE nature are the ones making it political. Not me.

And when CO2's properties were researched in the late 1800's, was that political? How about when the Air Force furthered infrared research for use in heat-seeking missiles? Was that political? Was it politically motivated in 1955? What's the motivation, anyway? "Liberals" want to, what, raise our gas prices? To what end? You think I like paying more for gasoline? For food? You keep harping on this political point without ever addressing the science or even producing any evidence. Your argument so far boils down to "Nuh UH."

 

[reefedjib]

Your argument so far boils down to "Nuh UH."

You have not presented a compelling case. I am skeptical.

 

[Deuce]

You have not presented a compelling case. I am skeptical.

Fine line between pre-judging an argument and being skeptical. If you're interested in further educating yourself, try that skeptical science site I linked. They have a good summary of things, and lots of links to additional information. I often find that skeptics want everything given to them in one nice, neat package, but science does not work that way.

I worked as a flight instructor for several years, so I have at least a bit of knowledge about education. If there's one lesson I took from this, it's that to learn something you must make the effort yourself. When I first took interest in climate science, I too was a skeptic. I thought such a big planet couldn't possibly be changed noticeably by the effects of a mere .4% concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. I thought that surely mankind's influence would be dwarfed by the planet and sun's natural cycles. Eventually, however, I took personal responsibility to look into the issue, and spent countless hours reading research and arguments on both sides. Every single link spammed by some of the guys in this very forum, I read. Then I go look for what the other guy says about it, to get both sides.

Maybe I'm just a big science geek, but I love learning about this sort of thing.

 

[ptif219]

Spin and speculation combined with several outright lies. Typical of the skeptics camp.

Truth just like global warming this panel was a fraud and a scam

 

[ptif219]

LOL ...there is no cure for you.

Read the WSJ article I posted

 

[Deuce]

Read the WSJ article I posted

Maybe some day you will learn that opinion pieces aren't proof of anything. They're opinion.
I could write an opinion piece that says ptif219 eats babies.

 

[ptif219]

Maybe some day you will learn that opinion pieces aren't proof of anything. They're opinion.
I could write an opinion piece that says ptif219 eats babies.

I would believe the part about The university paying for it, it seems they got the results they paid for. How is it an independent panel when one person was a member for many years of the department they are investigating. You can spin and dodge but these appear to be facts. This makes this panel a fraud and a scam