Safe Speed Forums

Well, considering the latest scandal relating to fiddled tree ring data!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/

One has to wonder.

As an aside I also came across this gem recently

http://www.gavinmenzies.net/pages/maps/voyages.htm

(You will need to click the "Play" arrow to see the map)

The subject is somewhat controversial but, Check out the claimed northern voyage!

Up the west coast of Greenland, round the top and across the Arctic ocean to return to China via the Bering straits!

As of last summer, this voyage would have been impossible owing to sea ice!

So..

How much Ice was up there back then.

And

Why are there still Polar bears!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I was thinking of Millikan as I remember doing his experiment to determine the charge on an electron at school, he was somewhat selective with his data set to reduce his stated error limits and get the answer he was expecting. While there is some controversy on the validity of this and his answer was wrong due to another issue, his work did have another effect, this is what Richard Feynman (one of my heros incidentally) had to say.



I humbly suggest that while Physicists may no longer have 'that kind of disease' ...

Given I made it clear that I accept the climate is changing and that it seems reasonable that humans could have had some effect on it I do not see how DCB can label me a 'denier'. If anything I am more with Canute in believing that the idea we can control nature is hubris, though not for the same underlying reason.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Funny, I was thinking of Millikan too.

ISTR a picture of his notebooks with something like "Good result, Publish!" written across the bottom.

I also remember a story by my old Physics teacher of a Cambridge Physics final experiment where all the candidates (bar a few) managed to get the "Right" answer, despite the (mains powered, and therefore using the mains frequency as a refrence) timers being US ones rather than UK ones! (A deliberate mistake?? )

Whether or not this is a true story , I don't know, but the temptation to massage results to give, what you believe to be, the "Right" answer must be almost overwhelming (Especially if next years research grant might depend on it!)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

That is the reason for the insistence on peer review of scientific publication. The Hwang Woo-suk's, the Fleichmans and Pons, the Milikans don't get away for very long with publishing false data. Research grants don't depend on getting the "right" answer. They depend n producing interesting, repeatable results. Faking results might earn a brief moment of glory in the tabloid journals but ultimately it won't advance a career. Putting your name to a brilliant student's work is a much surer path to career advancement

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Who got away with the "45 minutes to Armageddon" claim that was used to justify (the funding for) the 6/7 year Iraq occupation?

How are the fraudsters caught? Could it be due to other independent/opposing parties scrutinising (through thorough investigation) the data and being unable to reproduce the results?
Could there be many more that don't get caught - especially if they're unwilling to share their raw data and models thus preventing anyone from disproving them?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

You are using the fact that a politician (who commands massive machine for concealing unpalatable truths) told lies as a basis for discrediting the scientific peer review system. I wonder why I can't take you seriously



Fraudsters are indeed caught because others are unable to reproduce their results. But it isn't about sharing data it is about repeating the experiment independently. For example when the scientists at Parkes observatory in Australia announced that they had discovered a new type of pulsar we didn't demand to see their raw data and reanalyse it. If their basic methodology had been wrong anyone analysing their raw data would have got the same wrong results. Instead we observed the same part of the sky with the our telescope using our own methods, collected a new set of data and analysed it with our own tools. The fact that our analysis agreed with the Australian analysis gave a high degree of confidence that the phenomenon was real.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Had you considered that this was my point? How about applying that to the AGW debate?


How can one repeat the experiment if the source doesn’t share the raw data? (see below)


Anyone who had cause to dispute it would have; unlike pulsars there is cause to dispute AGW theories, and pulsars have precious little effect on agendas and policies. Your example is not relevant to our AGW argument.


Again this doesn't apply. The AGW problem is in the interpretation of the raw data and the subjectivity of the parameters used to model the climate; Not everyone will make the same assumptions (or 'methodology' as you have seemingly chosen to refer to it).


No, again your example doesn't apply. Today's climate scientists have a monopoly over the raw data from their stations/samples, not everyone can look at that raw data like they can the sky. We could get so much more confidence that the AGW phenomenon was real if the models and the raw data driving them were shared - why isn't this the case? What do the climate modellers have to hide?

What exactly is wrong with sharing the raw data and the models? Surely science shouldn't be secret, especially when it comes to saving the planet - right?
Just like religion, are we meant to rely on the extremely unscientific 'faith'?
Or could there another reason why that data isn't $hared?

'I wonder why I can't take you, and them, seriously'


Remember, this planet repeatedly plunged into deep and prolonged ice ages when the level of CO2 was many times higher than now. Do you agree that those who cannot reconcile this with our current ‘tipping point’ of global warming simply cannot be in a position to make any such far reaching claims of the effects of CO2 on the climate?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

The scientists who spent a lot of time and effort collecting it do not want another group of scientists getting ahead by combining their data?

I just suggest this as a simpler reason than conspiracy.

A climate site I have been reading tonight suggests that even if we stopped producing co2 altogether it would take 700 years for the level to drop back down to the pre-industrial. This does make me wonder why we have to make such drastic short term cuts if this is the scope of the problem.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying. Please elucidate.

[
Collecting the raw data is the experiment.



Indeed there could! I can only speak from my own experience but in Radio Astronomy the "raw data" is considered to be the property of the experimenter until he has had a fair chance to process the data and publish his results in a peer reviewed journal. That is a period of about two years, I think. That is to protect the career of the experimenter. If the "raw data" was immediately made public then the original experimenter, who has invested a deal of time and ingenuity in designing and running the experiment, could be deprived of the credit for his work. And the rush to be the first to publish would mean that the analysis would tend to be quick and superficial rather than deep and profound.

It would be wonderful to think that AWG scientists were purely motivated by a perceived need to save the planet. But they are career scientists who have to protect their career advancement. Behind an urbane front science, like all academia, is a vicious and competitive environment.



No., I do not agree. Because scientists are unable to explain the behaviour of the atmosphere thousands of years ago (a period for which there is no direct "raw data") does not disqualify them from investigating contemporary global warning. The fact that astron0mers cannot explain how the Universe was formed does not prevent them from studying the Universe that they observe today.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Exactly!! As I said in my reply to Steve. I have been involved with Scientists for over thirty years and they are some of the most obsessive and ambition people I have every met. Don't invoke conspiracy to explain something that can equally be explained by self-interest



The reasoning is - The current level of CO2 is just sustainable so we don't need to get back to pre-industrial levels. But a small increase in the level could precipitate disaster so we need to take urgent short term measures to prevent that happening.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Someone has got away (not held to account) with publishing false data about Iraq’s military machine, resulting with the wrongful, massive influence in politics (and funding for the occupation); how did they get away with it? Is it impossible that this kind of unaccountable misrepresentation/political influence could have influenced the AGW debate?


Nope! That’s the measurement: “to collect”; inputting raw data is not any form of experiment, it is only an ancillary (supplementary) part of it. An experiment is “to try out” which in this case applies to the parameters used within the climate models and data processing. How can you not know this simple difference if you’ve been working with scientists for 30 years. PS, I’ve been working with professional scientists for about 15 years (and I do a fair amount of physics myself, and I have numerous patents in my name), so don’t think your ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy precludes my arguments or makes them carry less weight.

How can one repeat the experiment (to spell it out for you: the results and conclusions from the processed models) if the source doesn’t share the raw data from their samples/stations?


Which is fair enough, but then you go and misrepresent the argument with…


Again you completely miss the obvious. I have never asked for the raw data to be made immediately available, before it has been processed with results and conclusion; that’s just silly and can be detrimental to the process of scientific discovery.

What I am asking is for the raw data and climate models to be released for scrutiny which has been used as justification for the conclusions which has led to policy being influenced - the stuff that made it into the IPCC reports. You have obviously implied this is sensible – so what is there to argue about?

There’s no point in demanding raw data for reproducibility, and scrutiny of the processing, when the analysis of them hasn’t even been published by the source.
When you did your experiments at school, did you give the raw data from your tests, or did your teacher simply believe your conclusions?

What exactly is wrong with sharing the raw data and the models which are being used to justify proposed AGW policy? Surely science shouldn't be secret, especially when it comes to saving the planet - right?
Just like religion, are we meant to rely on the extremely unscientific 'faith'?


Yes, the laws of physics must have changed significantly over that time

You’re becoming increasingly desperate and irrational with your analogies. Examining local events from 10,000 to 100,000 years ago doesn’t really compare with universal events from 13,700,000,000 years ago for which we’re struggling to find the scant evidence for.

If scientists are unable to explain why our planet didn’t experience thermal runaway when the CO2 was 9x higher than today, how can anyone accept their simplistic argument of a slight increase resulting with meltdown?
Yes, only recently have scientists have been able to get direct data, does that preclude any data and analysis from all earlier time periods? Don’t forget, I’m not talking about small differences here and there (which is what you and the IPCC are talking about “just sustainable”); I’m talking about 9x higher. Direct or indirect, that’s got to be a strong sign that confounding factors are at play, unless you believe that data to be in error by a factor of 9?


Be honest: you don’t actually know that, do you?
Moreover, you can’t determine that to be true even if you have the knowledge and ability to determine it, simply because you don’t have access to the raw data used which that conclusion was based on.


Nice to see we agree on something. Don’t forget about their cases for funding, you know, that “self interest” you just mentioned.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Oh it's simpler than that.
Would a research group, whose future funding depends on their analysis and conclusions, be entirely happy to risk allowing themselves to be proven wrong and losing that funding by releasing the raw data and models used, especially when there are compelling reasons to dispute their conclusions?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Aside from the questions about how anyone knows what is sustainable and what the overall human contribution to the rise is, why if current levels are sustainable are the government trying to reduce emissions by such drastic amounts?

The site I linked earlier gives the following information.

Pre-industrial co2 = 280ppm
Current co2 = 380ppm

They have estimated the total human co2 load since 1850 and calculated that this would have raised the level to 500ppm, however this is not the case as they point out the environment has managed to sink some of this extra load. Now the amount of co2 sequestered from the atmosphere is obviously proportional to the level in the atmosphere hence the 700 years span to reduce to pre-industrial I mentioned earlier. This is clear as in the last 150 years the co2 has risen by 100ppm so 120ppm has been absorbed, if this were a fixed linear relationship then it should only take 125 years to return to 280ppm not 700. There is also the fact that our output has also risen over the last 150 years so the level of input has not been constant either.

If it was linear then it would be clear that we could sustain an output of 120/220 or 55% of our current output, as above however the relationship is not linear so the environment is coping with far more than the 8ppm this would suggest.

I have had a quick look for some graphs or data to compare current emission and sequestration rates and estimates of sustainable emissions levels. I did not find any graphs etc with numbers on the scales, there were some in pretty colours without values, these are of course useless. This is the sort of information I would like to see available on websites covering climate change maintained by, for example, the BBC or the government.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

There is that too, however I still think it is more likely that more scientists are honest than not, within the bounds of self-interest as DCB suggests at least.

When I first heard about the Stern report I thought that his bottom line that in the long run climate change would cost more than doing something about it was interesting. I am reasonably green (small g) and have been for a long time, I like driving, but do not waste fuel as it costs too much, our house is well insulated and has a high end efficient heating system, we do not waste food and our bin bag is probably a fifth the size of most of our neighbours most weeks. I think that allowing electricity companies to burn gas was a bad idea and that we should have invested in renewable sources such as tidal barrages a long time ago.

I have always been a bit dubious about AGW, however I hate waste, short sightedness and inefficiency.

So now the government has realised they might have made a mistake they are going to put it 'right' by taxing us and to do so are finding helpful scientists to back them up. That the egos of politicians makes them stand up and say 'I will do it bigger than you' just to try and prove some self inflated view of their importance does not help. So I will admit a good deal of my distrust of the CC predictions is down to their use by politicians to control and tax us even more even though I am on the whole pro-environment. If they stop using science to justify carbon trading, green taxes and insisting we should massively cut emissions while ignoring developing nations because it is only 'fair' and actually do something real we might just get the truth.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I have no reason to dispute that most scientists are honest.
I also agree that many AGW climate modellers are also honest, you only have to look at the protests from the great many who were part of the (now substantially reduced) IPCC consensus to realise that must be the case.

However, doubt has fallen over the other AGW climate modellers, partly because of their lack of transparency and partly because other IPCC contributors have since turned against them (and partly because of the obvious confounding factor that must exist [colder planet with much higher CO2]). Now I'm not saying the pro-AGW climate modellers are dishonest or that they must be wrong, they possibly are completely honest as well as possibly completely correct with their conclusions, but right now they're not helping themselves by being so coy with their data and models; I can’t help but read into that (and they do have a demonstrable conflict of interest).

Everyone should refuse to be forced to make significant sacrifices without knowing that the reasoning behind it is able to pass independent scrutiny (even if they aren't able to do it themselves).

I should point out that any CO2 sacrifices of mine will be much smaller than the average person. I don't use cars/buses/trains for commuting or shopping (OK, 3 times in the last 18 months); I am also concerned about funding inhumane regimes. I am all for efficiency, elegant solutions and sustainability (I even reuse my free plastic cups for weeks on end), it’s just that there is no reason why I should have confidence that the current pro-AGW arguments are conducive to those.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

As I recall the 'original study' was fair and covered many point of valid concerns and of issues that just didn't exist.
However politician types got their hand son it and shredded out all the bits that didn't sound like it proved their point, go the document that they now quote from like a bible and the scientist that were up in arms and asking for their few remaining words to be removed (or all included) !

I think governments should PROVE perhaps on a website their arguments and those that wish to vote can do so by a certain date, then decide whether to implement or not ! Plus BOTH sides MUST be put forward to show a good balanced and fair debate or at least readable POV's.

The globe has been warming and cooling for millions of years, how can we be so arrogant as to believe that we are even capable of such devastation !

The Ch4 did some good programs showing the nonsense of it all, and the best example that I recall was how all of the industrial output of the entire planet was still only just 1% of any volcanic eruption, and there are several of them a year!

I think things like practical common sense solutions to things are often good when appropriate, however to stir up such (becoming) neigh 1st world mass hysteria over this is just ridiculous.

BTW if I hold a 'belief' therefor in how I drive any vehicle - like a religion - am I therefor immune to any and every attempt at enforcement against me?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? – study says “no”

Controversial new climate change results

University of Bristol Press release issued 9 November 2009

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/10/b ... y-says-no/

Telling the truth will not be tolerated No doubt their funding will now disappear !

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nigel_bytes

Building on your great point:

Given the crappy guilt-trip propaganda like adverts showing drowning dogs, and AGW now being a religion (and acceptance of the processing and modelling of the evidence a matter of faith) – does that make ‘green taxation’ the modern equivalent of the Indulgences (tariff penances) of yore? That system was well and truly abused ...

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

As Professor David Nutt knows only too well.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

To be honest I am surprised that he did not resign. If being a scientific advisor means that he can't speak about his research results when they send a message which conflicts with the PMs preconceived notions then being a scientific advisor means he can't do his day job.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown