I've never met a conspiracy theory I didn't like.

"nd here there was an upside because, buried deep within the paper, Amman and Wahl had quietly revealed their verification R2 figures, which were, just as McIntyre had predicted, close to zero for most of the reconstruction, strongly suggesting that the hockey stick had little predictive power. "

The hockey stick is not being used as a predictive tool. It is only about 10% of the case for AGW. Read the report.

"The hockey stick is not being used as a predictive tool. It is only about 10% of the case for AGW."

That may be the case SJT but it was 100% of the original media lie willingly perpetrated by the IPCC and its entirely complicit scientific fraternity--to their everlasting shame.

If the hockey stick wasn't important to the AGW case, then there wouldn't be such a shameful effort to protect it.

SJT; you and your mates, luke and ender and new boy on the block, NT, castigate anyone who doesn't have an open mind; yet when presented with overwhelming evidence of manipulation and deceit you still prevaricate; ender has revealed himself as a dyed in the wool clive hamilton disciple and enviro-nazi; what about you, can you bring yourself to call Ammann's and Wahl's disgrace a disgrace? Or do you need to be locked in a dark room with Sherwood and Allen's report and a hockey stick for company?

Well at least you didn't say I was NT. Anyway could names names but when you Cohenite also censor your "own side" I'll be impressed. I think Ender is pretty mild actually. A question of who you'd like living next door. You'd probably whack a bogus tort on me withing a week for daring to have a view.

The Hockey Stick smote and having smitten moves on.....

Leaving the reputations of the AGW promoters in tatters.

"If the hockey stick wasn't important to the AGW case, then there wouldn't be such a shameful effort to protect it."

If McIntyre could get the story straight, I might think he had a point. Yet he continually resorts to personal attacks, and misrepresents what the science is.

The Hockey stick is not the whole case, and not the majority of the case. Read the report 1, it's part of a whole case, and even if it is not correct (and I don't accept McIntyre has proven anything), it does not invalidate the rest of the case. The reason the IPCC has gone to such lengths to get so many different sources for making their claim is that they know it is a difficult case to make, and they therefore use multiple paths investigation to make it.

Why hasn't anyone pulled up McIntyre, who claims to be so right and correct, on the strawman attacks he makes on the science. Anyone can attack something on a fictional basis. The Hockey Stick is not predictive. PCA is a valid statistical tool, even if McIntyre mispresents it completely. Tell him to speak honestly, and I might listen.

"yet when presented with overwhelming evidence of manipulation and deceit you still prevaricate"

Rubbish. Why would any self respecting scientist give McIntyre the time of day. He acts like a pal when he's with them, then he's publicly attack them on his blog, using misrepresntations and ignorance as his tools of choice.

SJW,

Why don't you pull McIntyre up of the things you accuse him of.

But as you are playing the man, you have surely lost the debate.

Indeed - what we have here is a verifiable and documented illustration of IPCC corruption that no one should defend.

Ender:

"He acts like a pal when he's with them, then he's publicly attack them on his blog, using misrepresntations and ignorance as his tools of choice."

As Luke would say, come on! McIntyre is, and always has been, the very model of rigorousness. I have been following his CA work for years and technically he is scrupulous 'par excellence'. I don't always like or enjoy what has to say, but for you to state that he uses "misrepresntations and ignorance as his tools of choice" is just so crap and dead wrong it only reveals you to be a complete and utterly brain dead, low rent wally.

"But as you are playing the man, you have surely lost the debate."

If you read the topic on CA, it is clearly McIntyre who is playing the man.

Cohenite

This entire "hockey-stick" episode has become a well-documented example of mini-conspiracy.

Its' initial purpose was to reduce the influence of the MWP in the global temperature differential graphs. Al Gormless' film made much of it for that reason ("see how insignificant the MWP is !!")

The Wegman report into both the manipulation of statistics and the closed-circle peer review process has proven accurate. Even Gavin Rottweiler Schmidt on RC is now backing away from any significance that palaeo-climate reconstructions may have for the AGW case.

McKitrick and McIntyre have performed world-class due diligence. An interesting and constructive set of episodes over 3 years or so. The only part that puzzled me for a while is why Wahl and Ammann eventually released the detail - I still don't really know of course, but my best guess is that as mini-conspirators they are simply incompetent.

Ianl;

This really needs to be played out in the msm; despite SJT's CD the hockey stick is the heart and soul of AGW; and it is a sick, black heart and empty soul. The reason it won't is perhaps the reason why AW released their SI; the tracks are reasonably complex and would present too much of a challenge for the msm.

Now, what sort of action in tort should I throw at
luke.

SJT & Luke:

"The hockey stick is not being used as a predictive tool. It is only about 10% of the case for AGW."

The hockey stick is used in every political presentation on climate change, it is taught to school children, referenced by policy makers, and still included in AR4. It has been beaten over the heads of joe public saying "see what's happened so far and what's going to happen if you don't listen to us." It is the most striking visual AGW activists have.

But it's been invalidated in two ways, both by M&M ripping apart the statistical work AND by the determination that strip bark tree rings should not be used as a paleo temperature proxie. "Only 10% of the case for AGW," "only one proxie among many" - WRONG. All reconstructions referenced by the IPCC reference Mann and / or the same Briffa tree ring data, if you follow the chain from each paper back to its reference papers.

Regardless of personal oppinions towards AGW Mann SHOULD only be one statistical reconstruction and there SHOULD be other paleoclimate temp proxies referenced by the IPCC, but they are all intertwined. Yeah, it is a real problem, but hey, it held up until they published AR4 so now it's in the rear view mirror right?

Hi all, I'm back for a short time. I realize that I can't afford to delve into every controversy, but this particular one seems of great importance. It seems to me that the entire case against AGW is founded upon a conspiracy theory. That is, if you simply assume that the best advice comes from the most knowledgeable people, then you necessarily accept the basic AGW hypothesis. The only way that you can reject the AGW hypothesis is if you first reject the advice of the most knowledgeable people. Hence the need for a conspiracy theory.

This article gives us an ideal example of conspiracy theories at work. It's full of wild assumptions about the mental machinations of the supposed conspirators. Here's a good example of this kind of thinking, a quote from the cited article:

"With identical authorship, and a maze of cross-references between them, the two CC papers were carefully designed to make understanding how their arguments relied on each other as difficult as possible. "

The author assumes that the complexity of the argument arises from the malicious intent of the paper's writers. Alternative explanations -- that the argument is intrinsically complex, that the writers tackle topics in an order that the conspiracy theorist finds confusing -- are rejected and the assumption that they are conspirators is embraced.

Most people realize that conspiracy theories are intrinsically suspect. Sure, conspiracy theories are exciting -- where would Hollywood be without them? -- but in the real world, conspiracies are really hard to pull off, and the larger the conspiracy, the harder it is to keep it secret. Yet the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists blithely assume that thousands of scientists all over the world, working in hundreds of different institutions, are secretly coordinating their efforts in a grand effort to fool the world and wreak economic havoc. This assumption is patently absurd -- yet it is simply assumed to be true.

If this really were a grand theory, then why hasn't one single scientist had a stroke of conscience and come forward with letters and emails from other scientists coordinating the conspiracy? Why don't we have a smoking gun memo from the Master Conspirators to some Minion Conspirator specifying the Evil Deeds he is ordered to carry out? Surely with such a huge conspiracy, somebody, somewhere, would have left an incriminating memo on a desk for an honest janitor to notice, or an email would have accidently been cc'ed to the wrong person, or something would have gone wrong and the Grand Conspiracy would have been revealed for all to see -- but nothing of the kind has happened.

What's especially striking about the gullibility of the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists is their failure to seriously consider the question of motivation. What on earth would motivate thousands of scientists to participate in such a conspiracy? Surely it cannot be money -- many of these people have tenure and their position either way on AGW cannot affect their financial situations.

The most common motivation assumed by anti-AGW consiracy theorists is the desire to get research grant money. This requires the further assumption that all the people controlling the grant money are part of the conspiracy. The anti-AGW conspiracy theorists never ask the question "What motivates the people controlling the grants?" It's just taken for granted that those people are also conspirators, without any evidence or motivation whatsoever.

What's really ironic about all this is that the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists have everything backwards. They don't understand the basic motivations at work in the scientific community. Among research scientists, it's not money that glitters, it's the esteem of their peers, the highest expression of which is a Nobel Prize. And how does a scientist gain that esteem? Such esteem is never, ever obtained by playing "me too" games. The way to advance in the scientific world is to go AGAINST the consensus, to gainsay what everybody believes in, and show that you're right. It's the perverse people who advance in the scientific world, not the yes-men.

What do you think a scientist would do if they discovered something that blew AGW to hell? Do you really think they'd suppress it? Of course not -- a discovery like that would catapult the discoverer into the highest ranks of the scientific community. Yes, they'd double-check and triple-check their results, but they would hurry to be the first to publish a sensational discovery of that nature. And with all the thousands of scientists working on this issue, don't you think at least ONE would come up with convincing evidence to blow AGW to hell if it WERE wrong?

If you've ever been to a scientific meeting, you can sense the tension underneath the surface. Outwardly, everybody is very civil and polite, but lurking just underneath the surface is the all-against-all atmosphere; people are just waiting to nail each other on any mistake. Scientists are lone wolves; you couldn't get three scientists to unite in a conspiracy to get themselves out of a paper bag -- they'd argue themselves to death first.

This is the fatal, fundamental flaw in the opposition to AGW. Without a conspiracy theory, opposition to AGW crumbles. Yet a conspiracy theory in these circumstances is utterly preposterous.

"... they'd double-check and triple-check their results, but they would hurry to be the first to publish a sensational discovery of that nature."

More drivelling nonsense from Crawford.

If these people do undergo the amount of checking as you have indicated, why is so much of what gets printed and published under their names is so shot full of errors.

The Hockey stick was the poster child of the IPCC and willingly published by them with the backing of the cohort of scientists involved.It was fraudulent misrepresentation at its best.

The recent joint publications by the CSIRO and BOM on droughts has now been shown to have not complied with the best practice standards for statistical analysis.

The motivational theory that Crawford mentions is also clearly working to ensure that we are not geting the truth or the whole truth.

This whole game is full of convenient errors, exagerations and lies, but it is being used by public policy makers to now affect our economy and way of life in major ways.

Opposition to the current dogma is not conspirational at all-- at least you got that right-- but disgust as to how much the general public is is being conned by these people,who cant even comply with even the most basic professional standards.

Chris Crawford at August 14, 2008 04:34 AM You said "I realize that I can't afford to delve into every controversy, but this particular one seems of great importance. It seems to me that the entire case against AGW is founded upon a conspiracy theory." I sympathize. That a certain Dr. Wegman concluded that M&M got it right, the AGW proponents have made a concerted effort not to acknowledge, or correct the problems confirmed by Dr. Wegman and later again in the North NAS report. The two sides use simialr tactics. However, one is asking us to spend trillions, one is not. One can take your polemic and substitute such things as "anti-AGW conspiracy theorists" and replace with Mann/Bristle Cone Pine apologists and pretty well sum up the other side.

An example: you said "Most people realize that conspiracy theories are intrinsically suspect" would be replaced with "Most people realize that scientists who withold data and methods while asking the public to make large monetary contributions are intrinsically suspect". But rather than rely on what most people do or do not realize and the assumptions that go with such statements, let's look at the facts. And please note that the author used humorous polemics to advance the case and make it interesting.

You said "The author assumes that the complexity of the argument arises from the malicious intent of the paper's writers. Alternative explanations -- that the argument is intrinsically complex, that the writers tackle topics in an order that the conspiracy theorist finds confusing -- are rejected and the assumption that they are conspirators is embraced." Bishop Hill said " McIntyre's first action as a peer reviewer was therefore to request from Wahl and Amman the verification statistics for their replication of the stick. Confirmation that the R2 was close to zero would strike a serious blow at Wahl and Amman's work.

Caspar AmmanWahl and Amman's response was to refuse any access to the verification numbers, a clear flouting of the journal's rules. As a justification of this extraordinary action, they claimed that they had shown that McIntyre's criticisms had been rebutted in their forthcoming GRL paper, despite the fact that the paper had been rejected by the journal some days earlier. At the start of July, with his review of the CC paper complete, McIntyre took the opportunity to probe this point, by asking the journal to find out the anticipated publication date of the GRL paper. Wahl and Amman were forced to admit the rejection, but they declared that it was unjustified and that they would seek publication elsewhere." For the world of AGW where peer-reveiw is the gold standard, a work stated to be the refutation of adverse comments to be rejected surely would warrant a justifiable amount of attention, not that such attention is a conspiracy. So the argument is about R^2, a standard statistic.

Bishop Hill further stated "And here there was an upside because, buried deep within the paper, Amman and Wahl had quietly revealed their verification R2 figures, which were, just as McIntyre had predicted, close to zero for most of the reconstruction, strongly suggesting that the hockey stick had little predictive power." So you have gone on about "Master Conspirators to some Minion Conspirator specifying the Evil Deeds". The truly funny part of your post, is you propose a theory " The author assumes that the complexity of the argument arises from the malicious intent of the paper's writers. Alternative explanations -- that the argument is intrinsically complex, that the writers tackle topics in an order that the conspiracy theorist finds confusing -- are rejected and the assumption that they are conspirators is embraced." There is no complex argument. Though the case may not be simple, the authors and therefore IPPC AR4 contended that M&M was incorrect due to a technicality, that these authors then revealed that they had come up with the same result as M&M. And even funnier, this finding by M&M was what Dr. Wegman testified to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the findings of his own report. So, despite M&M being shown to have correct critisms of certain temperature reconstructions, the IPCC in AR4 still incorrectly deal with this subject. I submit if there is a conspiracy, it should be named after quite a good read "A Conspiracy of Dunces". If there is such a thing as a "denialist" pertaining to the climate, it is someone claiming that what M&M published in a peer reveiwed work is incorrect.

Chris Crawford says,

"What do you think a scientist would do if they discovered something that blew AGW to hell?"

The trouble is all climate science is based on speculative hypotheses that are never completely supported by the data because the data is incomplete and/or unreliable. This means it is not possible come up with a 'killer discovery' that would invalidate all previous research. The best we can hope for is a scientific community that keeps an open mind and is willing to discuss alternate explanations. Refusing to even consider alternate explanations because until they are 'conclusively supported by the data' is dangerous blindness because the CO2 hypothesis itself is not 'conclusively supported by the data’ either.

"This is the fatal, fundamental flaw in the opposition to AGW. Without a conspiracy theory, opposition to AGW crumbles."

The case for AGW is built on data and science that contradicts the consensus claims. These arguments are just as valid even if every scientist who support AGW are upstanding professionals that would only make honest mistakes.

That said, AGW advocates constantly reject any consideration of skeptical arguments for no reason other than the fact that they contradict the "consensus". This argument implies that the public must place unquestioning trust in a group of people that are accountable to no one but themselves. My question is why should they? What have scientists do to earn such unquestioning trust from the public. The public, for the most part, ignores most scientific research because it has no bearing on their lives. Climate research is different because it is being used to drive policies that will have a huge affect on people lives so they have a right and duty to demand that scientists demonstrate that they are worthy of trust.

This is why the hockey stick story is so damning. It does not make a difference whether the scientists in question had legitimate counter arguments and that they honestly felt that their scientific claims are supported. The fact that the IPCC and the science journals clearly bent the rules in order to allow the W&A to be published as a peer reviewed paper that could be used in AR4 completely undermines the credibility of the IPCC and the science journals.

The bottom line is: it is not enough for people in positions of trust to do the right thing – they must be perceived to be doing the right thing. It is clear to me that the IPCC and the climate science community have failed to meet this standard which means I don’t care if they really are a bunch of honest hardworking professionals – they have lost my trust as a result of their actions. If they want to regain that trust they are going to have to stop talking down to skeptics and start admitting they and human and acknowledging that mistakes have been made.

It's the specific invention of a statistical test that's the issue - and on this alone the whole hockey stick collapses.

In Ender's terminilogy - Nu-Statistics.

"If these people do undergo the amount of checking as you have indicated, why is so much of what gets printed and published under their names is so shot full of errors."

It is your assumption that the work is shot full of errors. You read a criticism of the work and assume that the criticism is correct. This does not mean that every paper published is right; there are lots of mistakes that show up. That's why we have so many corrective processes, such as critical letters and critical papers. But your assumption that lots of scientific papers are shot full of errors is not justified by the evidence.

"It was fraudulent misrepresentation at its best."

You're pushing the conspiracy theory with this statement.

"The motivational theory that Crawford mentions is also clearly working to ensure that we are not geting the truth or the whole truth."

Can you justify this assertion? I see no evidence to support it.

"This whole game is full of convenient errors, exagerations and lies, but it is being used by public policy makers to now affect our economy and way of life in major ways"

More conspiracy theory. And if you don't like the political reactions, then contest those actions in the political arena, not the scientific arena. As a citizen, your opinion means something, As a scientist, your opinion is useless unless you have expertise in the relevant fields.

"... these people,who cant even comply with even the most basic professional standards."

More conspiracy theory. Don't you see how your conspiracy assumptions completely permeate your thinking?

John F. Pittman argues that the processes of peer review were violated by CC and Messrs Wahl and Amman. Perhaps so; but I see little hard evidence of this. The important point though, is that this case does not constitute evidence in support of a conspiracy theory. Indeed, I read little in your post that directly addresses the conspiracy theory.

Raven writes "it is not possible come up with a 'killer discovery' that would invalidate all previous research."

On the contrary, I can think of lots of killer discoveries that would blow AGW out of the water. For example, there are thousands of possible temperature proxies out there arising from the temperature-dependent behaviors of millions of creatures both marine and terrestrial, flora and fauna, that could completely alter our paleoclimatology -- and blow the current temperature reconstructions to smithereens. They're just waiting to be discovered -- but nobody has found anything like that.

"The case for AGW is built on data and science that contradicts the consensus claims."

I assume you meant to write "The case AGAINST..." Yes, there's a case against AGW. And that case has been carefully evaluated in all its details by thousands of professionals who have come to the conclusion that the case for AGW is much stronger than the case against AGW. And therein lies the problem. Raven declares that the case against AGW is strong. Thousands of eminent scientists say that the case against AGW is weak. Who should a rational, objective bystander believe: the thousands of eminent scientists or the handful of opposing scientists?

"AGW advocates constantly reject any consideration of skeptical arguments for no reason other than the fact that they contradict the "consensus"."

I'm happy to let the scientists do their jobs and render their evaluations. If they reject a line of argument, that's their call to make, certainly not yours or mine. You are welcome to disagree with their conclusions, but I see no reason why a rational objective bystander should pay any attention to your objections.

"This argument implies that the public must place unquestioning trust in a group of people that are accountable to no one but themselves"

What makes this viable is that membership in that group is open to anybody who cares to learn the material in detail. You don't have to be a professional academic to publish papers -- there are plenty of "amateur academics" who publish papers even though they have no faculty appointment. If you think that they're wrong about something, go ahead and write a paper presenting your case. If the paper is good, it will be accepted. There's no conspiracy stopping you. It is that openness that justifies placing trust in the system. Not the people, the system.

" they [the citizens] have a right and duty to demand that scientists demonstrate that they are worthy of trust."

Indeed they do. But citizens individually do NOT have a right to barge into Joe Scientist's laboratory and rummage through his papers. They use the mechanisms that have been created for an orderly and democratic process: their governments. In the case of the USA, that would be Congress. And in fact, Congress HAS demanded that scientists justify their claims. And again, the process is carried out by the procedures that have been established for this sort of problem: the National Academy of Sciences. And the NAS has issued its opinion in favor of AGW. So, if you're an American citizen, challenging that conclusion would be no different than challenging the Supreme Court decision that gave the Presidency to Mr. Bush.

As to the "bending of the rules", I suggest that you first establish a database of the editorial decisions that have already been made for tens of thousands of papers just in the last few years. Are you quite certain that nothing like this has ever happened before?

You conclude that the scientists have lost your trust. But I will ask the completely rhetorical questions, "Is your mistrust based on your dislike of the political ramifications, or purely on the science? If this for you is merely a matter of protecting the truth, what about the many other fallacies prominent in our world, such as creationism? Are you equally determined to combat this assault on scientific truth?"

Lastly, I disagree with your assertion that mistakes have been made. Sure, at the lowest levels, scientists have flubbed some details, but on the big picture, that's not the case.

So I guess that puts SJT, Luke and Crawford in "denial" of proven data integrity issues with AGW.

And as for the hockey stick, not only is the handle rather deformed, the curve that looked so spectacular in 1998 is now quite obviously drooping like a drunks willy just 10 years later.

And it was only ever a northern hemisphere phenomena anyway. But don't worry fellas, Mr Thumb is always there to reassure you. But as you have obviously had it up your backside then for pity sake don't put it in your mouth. (the CSIRO version of multi-skilling)

"As to the "bending of the rules", I suggest that you first establish a database of the editorial decisions that have already been made for tens of thousands of papers just in the last few years. Are you quite certain that nothing like this has ever happened before?"

Are you suggusting that ignoring published policies and procedures is standard practice? If so you are arguing that the problem is much worse and is not an isolated issue.

"Is your mistrust based on your dislike of the political ramifications, or purely on the science?"

I could easily ask you if your "unquestioning trust is because you find the political ramifications to you liking?"

In my case, I had no reason to question AGW until I heard about the hockey stick. My issue is we should not make radical policy decisions based on the say-so of people who might not be objective.

The issue is people conducting research which could have a significant impact on people's lives have an obligation to conduct that research in a manner which is beyond question. A drug company that engaged in the tactics that some climate scientists would be facing civil if not criminal charges - even if the company was right.

I think what has happened here is a group of ivory tower scientists with no experience in public policy issues found themselves suddenly in the public spotlight. They simply did not understand that the rules for people conducting science that affects other people's lives are different and that it is not enough to be right - you have to be perceived to be trustworthy.

"So I guess that puts SJT, Luke and Crawford in "denial" of proven data integrity issues with AGW."

The determination of whether those data integrity issues has been proven is a matter requiring considerable scientific judgement. You have already decided that matter. And the only way you can reject the opinions of the experts is by clinging to a preposterous conspiracy theory.

"Are you suggusting that ignoring published policies and procedures is standard practice?"

I am familiar with several cases in which editors exercised their editorial judgement to overrule normal procedure for reasons that they felt were justified. Editors are not mere secretaries who just shuffle papers. They make difficult decisions based on their judgement. I am prepared to trust the judgement of the editors. Of course, if you believe that they too are part of the Great Global AGW Conspiracy, then you will reject this thinking.

Raven, you try to turn the tables on me by asking if I like the political ramifications. So I'm going to put my cards on the table, and ask that you do likewise. No, I do not like the political ramifications of AGW. I don't like the idea that we may have to suffer billions of dollars in losses today in order to avoid trillions of dollars of losses 50 years from now. I would be much happier if AGW were proved wrong. However, I am a realist, and I do not allow my hopes or my political preferences to intrude into my judgement of reality. And so I accept the ugly truth. I believe that many AGW opponents are living in a fantasy world because they refuse to accept the scientific results, and so fall back on a conspiracy theory to justify imposing their political preferences upon reality. I decry such behavior.

Now it's your turn.

"A drug company that engaged in the tactics that some climate scientists would be facing civil if not criminal charges - even if the company was right."

I disagree. And a supermajority of scientists disagree as well. And the only way you can cope with the disagreement of a supermajority of scientists is by believing that they're all part of a mammoth conspiracy.

"...they [scientists] simply did not understand that the rules for people conducting science that affects other people's lives are different"

Well, that's a cute speculation, but it assumes that science is done sloppily, that scientists just sort of muck around with the truth, not really caring much about whether they're right or wrong, and now they're bringing these sloppy work habits to the AGW issue. Basically, you're assuming that people you disagree with are sloppy and irresponsible. It's easy to believe something when you dismiss others as less noble than yourself. It's also incorrect.

Chris Crawford, yours is the first time I have seen this "they're all part of a mammoth conspiracy" theory. I look at many, many sites daily, and I have only heard that theory here, from you. OTH, I have seen claims of individual deceits, some small group deceits, and many claims of arrogance.

Mammoth conspiracy is an interesting but fatally flawed theory. Try again.

CoRev, editor
http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com

Chris Crawford says:
"Now it's your turn."
I am a pragmatist who looks at each issue on it own merits. I argued strongly against the Iraq War because I thought that the intelligence was inconclusive and not sufficient to justify the enormous cost in blood and money. I started looking into the science of AGW because I was felt my city government wasn't doing enough to prepare for the consequences of GW and I wanted some hard figures to give to them. I was quite shocked to discover how rediculously flimsy the scientific foundations for AGW really are.

"I disagree. And a supermajority of scientists disagree as well. And the only way you can cope with the disagreement of a supermajority of scientists is by believing that they're all part of a mammoth conspiracy."

Humans are herd animals - always had and always will be. They also have an incredible capacity for self-deception and will believe anything if it is there self-interest to do so. Scientists are no exception.

IOW, I don't believe there is a conspiracy amoung scientists to deceive the public (trying to claim I do is a silly strawman). They are only saying what they honestly believe. However, there is a difference between being honest and objective and that is why the hockey stick saga is significant because the climate science community remained silent and/or viciouslly attacked Steve McIntyre when he tried to raise the issues. To me that is irrefutable evidence that the scientific community is no longer objective when it comes to AGW.

Of course, I realize that people who are not objective could still be right.

Ender:

"He acts like a pal when he's with them, then he's publicly attack them on his blog, using misrepresntations and ignorance as his tools of choice."

ender, quite honestly I don't know how you can show your face in public. As a Hive Hamilton devotee you have nothing to offer in terms of substantive debate and I suggest you go hang your head in shame and not come back until you're ready to apologize for this self indiced mental illness.

Chris says "No, I do not like the political ramifications of AGW. I don't like the idea that we may have to suffer billions of dollars in losses today in order to avoid trillions of dollars of losses 50 years from now. I would be much happier if AGW were proved wrong. However, I am a realist, and I do not allow my hopes or my political preferences to intrude into my judgement of reality."
Chris may I ask as a realist do you think that an emmissions trading scheme or a carbon tax will actually accomplish the goal of reducing CO2 levels?...given that we know India and China will be continuing to expand their co2 output, does anything we do really matter?
My own thoughts are;
When we have a viable alternatives to fossil fuels then we will naturally see co2 output falling.
Until then we will be taxed for no gain and an obviously significant loss, including fewer jobs and a wider gap between the have's and have nots.

Raven you make some interesting and to me very valid points!
regards Toby

CoRev denies that opponents of AGW embrace a conspiracy theory. It's certainly true that they do not explicitly declare that there's a conspiracy -- that would reveal their true thinking too clearly. But in fact, their assumption of a conspiracy permeates most of the anti-AGW commentary. I have already cited several examples of conspiracy theory thinking in this discussion; there's plenty more where they come from. But even more important, whether they admit to it or not, AGW opponents have to embrace some sort of conspiracy theory -- how else can they respond to the undeniable truth that the great majority of scientists, and almost all the relevant scientific institutions, have declared against them? That's the killer problem for the AGW opponents: the experts say they're wrong. So they need to dismiss the experts.

Raven writes, "[Humans] have an incredible capacity for self-deception and will believe anything if it is there self-interest to do so. Scientists are no exception."

So where's the self-interest? I have already shown that self-interest for scientists works in favor of their demolishing AGW. Can you offer a plausible motivation for them to deceive themselves?

" the climate science community remained silent and/or viciouslly attacked Steve McIntyre when he tried to raise the issues."

You are dismissing, of course, the possibility that they rejected his ideas because they thought his ideas were wrong.

Toby asks, "Chris may I ask as a realist do you think that an emmissions trading scheme or a carbon tax will actually accomplish the goal of reducing CO2 levels?"

No, I don't think that any of the current proposals are adequate to fix the problem. Indeed, I am dubious that any economically viable program can fix the problem. We're caught between a rock and a hard place here. But that's a political issue, not a scientific one, and I think humanity needs to seriously discuss that political issue. All this shooting-the-messenger nonsense about climate scientists is merely delaying a responsible consideration of the problem.

I agree with you that we have now established a useful synergy between the rising costs of fossil fuels and the problem of CO2 emissions. Replacing fossil fuels with other forms of energy addresses both questions. But I'd still like us to consider the problem rationally, rather than denying reality because we don't want to face an unpalatable set of options.

"If the hockey stick wasn't important to the AGW case, then there wouldn't be such a shameful effort to protect it."

Really, I wonder about the shameful effort to attack it.

Chris Crawford says:
"So where's the self-interest? I have already shown that self-interest for scientists works in favor of their demolishing AGW. Can you offer a plausible motivation for them to deceive themselves?

Everybody wants to be a hero - its a natural human instinct. By participating in the effort to save humanity from itself scientists can feel really good about themselves and their work.

Conversely, trying to tear down the AGW hypothesis might get you some brownie points as hard nosed scientist but by doing so you would be putting humanity's future at risk if you ended up being wrong but delayed action in the short term. You would also expose your collegues as fools for making the overly certain catastrophic statements they already have made.

IOW: there is little professional incentive for any scientist to buck the concensus. It makes much more sense to accept it and find some way to distinguish yourself within that framework.

"You are dismissing, of course, the possibility that they rejected his ideas because they thought his ideas were wrong."

Well this is the crux of the issue. Both the NAS and the Wegman reports have supported McIntyre's analyses but the NAS report did try to use W&A report to argue that MBH may been wrong but 'other lines of evidence' supported the findings of MBH. McIntrye has now shown that W&A is junk for the same reasons as MBH which means the NAS claims of 'other lines of evidence supporting MBH' must be dismissed.

I have also read what I can on both sides and although I am not a stats major I have the mathematical background to follow the discussions. Based on that I have also come to the conclusion that McIntrye has the better argument.

IOW, the findings of NAS, Wegman and my own understanding of the issue mean I must conclude that the climate science community is either being intentionally dishonest or lost any ability to look at facts objectively. I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt and assume it is a loss of objectivity rather than deliberate malice.

" By participating in the effort to save humanity from itself scientists can feel really good about themselves and their work."

Oh, come on -- be serious! Do you think that any scientist is stupid enough to think that this work is saving humanity? All it's doing is giving humanity a very unpleasant set of options. Do you think that a doctor feels like a hero when he tells a patient that she has cancer? You're really reaching here, Raven. Besides, you're ignoring the far larger effect of personal advancement. As I have already explained, scientists don't advance their careers by going along with the crowd -- they get ahead by showing the crowd that it's wrong. All the incentives for scientists are set up in exactly the REVERSE direction that you are assuming.

"Conversely, trying to tear down the AGW hypothesis might...be putting humanity's future at risk if you ended up being wrong but delayed action in the short term."

Doesn't that argument apply just as forcefully to you? And if YOU are able to resist it, why shouldn't a scientist be able to resist it?

" You would also expose your collegues as fools for making the overly certain catastrophic statements they already have made."

Yep -- and that's how you get ahead in the world of science. It's not like the business world, or the political world, or the military world. It's a subculture with its own powerful mores, and you are ignoring those mores.

"...which means the NAS claims of 'other lines of evidence supporting MBH' must be dismissed"

Well, if you're smarter than the NAS, then that might be true. But we all know that the eminent scientists in the NAS are a lot more expert on this topic than you are. So how do you answer that? With a conspiracy theory?

"I have also read what I can on both sides and although I am not a stats major I have the mathematical background to follow the discussions. Based on that I have also come to the conclusion that McIntrye has the better argument."

You're welcome to your own opinion, but how can you expect a rational, objective observer to take your opinion over that of many professional scientists who DO have the statistics background to understand this in great depth, and come to conclusions contrary to your own?

"the findings of NAS, Wegman and my own understanding of the issue mean I must conclude that the climate science community is either being intentionally dishonest or lost any ability to look at facts objectively"

Bingo -- conspiracy theory! Since you MUST be right, they must be wrong, and the only way they could be wrong is if they have lost the ability to look at the facts objectively. And why would that happen? What dark forces would induce all those scientists to turn into mindless zombies? Maybe it's space aliens! ;-)

Raven, Toby, I agree.

Chris - please give up on the straw man conspiracy line - it does your obvious intelligence no credit to insinuate that climate sceptics are largely paranoid.

I too am willing to give W&A the benefit of doubt and assume it is a loss of objectivity rather than deliberate malice.

Anyone working in science who is familiar with the history of science (even in just their own narrow field) will tell you that history is littered with odd little bandwagons on all scales.

A good modern example is the persistence of those in paleoclimatology who have flogged the stomatal index to death to infer ambient pCO2 levels, despite a goodly number of (peer reviewed) papers right there in their own circle of relevant journals which have shown (at least) that stomatal indices should be used with very great caution for this purpose.

I'm just another little 'bandwagon effect' that the stomatal index enthusiasts tend to be mainstream AGW as well. However, I tend to prefer the term 'herd instinct'.

OK, Steve, so you assume that it's not a conspiracy, but rather a kind of mass delusion, in which thousands of scientists the world over have succumbed to some mysterious force that causes them to lose their objectivity with respect to AGW. And what might this mysterious force be? How does it operate on their minds?

Chris Crawford says:
"Since you MUST be right, they must be wrong, and the only way they could be wrong is if they have lost the ability to look at the facts objectively."

You are being rediculous. There are many very intelligent and informed people have looked at this issue and many have concluded that McIntyre is right. They may not be climate scientists but many are scientists in other fields with relevany expertise. Who are you to say they they are wrong and these "climate scientists" are right? By insisting that they are wrong you are accusing them of lacking objectivity at best and accusing them of malice at worst. IOW: you have your own "conspiracy theory".

I have no choice but to read the arguments on both sides and make my own ecision. I could be wrong but I find your suggestion that I blindly accept the word of the self-appointed climate science community is quite absurd. Blind trust is a recipe for disaster.

Steve, I realize that I have been unfair in asking you about the "mysterious force" when in fact, you have already declared that force: 'herd instinct'.

I shall begin by pointing out that scientists are not ungulates. The assertion that they are subject to social forces that enforce conformity ignores the mechanisms I have explained -- and that you are presumably familiar with -- that enforce nonconformity. Sure, a scientist can eke out a dismal existence publishing 'me too' papers that merely confirm what everybody already knows. Is that the kind of scientist you want to be? Do you dream of spending your life confirming other people's ideas? Wouldn't you rather come up with something that turns the world upside down, that upsets the apple cart of established science? If you did just happen to discover something that contradicted what everybody else believes in, which angel would you listen to:

1. "Now Steve, we don't want to upset anyone. Better not report this awesome discovery -- it would only cause controversy and strife."

2. "Yahoo! This could get you a position at Scripps, Harvard, Stanford -- you'd have your pick of positions! Let's nail down this baby and publish it before somebody else does!"

Which would you pick, Steve?

Chris says:
"OK, Steve, so you assume that it's not a conspiracy, but rather a kind of mass delusion, in which thousands of scientists the world over have succumbed to some mysterious force that causes them to lose their objectivity with respect to AGW. And what might this mysterious force be? How does it operate on their minds?"

For starters it is not 1000's of scientists. There are no more than 20 scientists publishing in the dendro field (that may be an over estimate). You probably have no more than a few 100 working on the climate models. They rest of the scientists in world are told by the climate modellers that their models have been verified and are accurate. Since it is not their specialty the non-modellers have no choice but to accept the claims of the climate modellers. This creates an illusion of a wide consensus when it is really a case of one scientist showing professional respect towards another scientist working in area outside their expertise.

If this AGW thing comes crashing down the fault will be largely laid at the feet of the climate modellers who exaggerated the reliability of their models. People who trusted the modellers will be able to justify their position because it was outside their expertise.

Chris,

Have you read the Wegman report? If so please explain why a respected statistian would make the claims he did? Do you think he was bought off by big oil?

Chris says:
"Now Steve, we don't want to upset anyone. Better not report this awesome discovery -- it would only cause controversy and strife."

The thought process is more like:
1) I can be a team player and stick with the AGW paradidm and try to find new lines of evidence to support it. This would ensure my papers get a relatively easy ride through peer review.

2) I can buck the trend and try to find a way to show the consensus is wrong. I might become famous but in mean time I get be be accused of being a shill for big oil, face a long fight getting anything through peer review and have by sources of government funding threatened.

Gee. Seems to me that most scientists would go for option 1). Your view of the scientific process is hopelessly naive and not supported by anything I have seen or heard nor by an understanding of human nature.

My apologies for not responding earlier however my Ministerial duties intervened--not that I have much to do anyway.The blindingly obvious is like that.

My colleague the Minister for Climate Change however has yet to wake up to this fact, and feels that she must get her knickers in a twist and spend up big--other wise she doesnt feel as though she has done anything useful. But then Lawyers are like that in real life as well.

As to a response to Crawfords further dribbling nonsense Raven has dealt very well with that, particualarly this para:

... what has happened here is a group of ivory tower scientists with no experience in public policy issues found themselves suddenly in the public spotlight. They simply did not understand that the rules for people conducting science that affects other people's lives are different and that it is not enough to be right - you have to be perceived to be trustworthy."'

Says it all really.. but it doesnt surprise me one bit that the perpetrators of these calumnies think that they above this, and normal professional standards.

Raven, you seem to be making the case that the entire AGW hypothesis is based on the work of less than 20 people. To put it baldly, I don't believe you. The IPCC reports discuss a huge range of topics, and they involve far more than 20 people. You claim that it all hinges on one small topic -- but that's not the way that the scientists see it. They aren't idiots, Raven, and they make their judgements based on a great deal of material.

As to the motivations of a single scientist (Wegman), I won't speculate. Scientists are a very diverse lot, and we should never give a lot of credence to the claims of any individual. That's why we have peer review and scientific institutions like the NAS -- to produce a jointly determined set of answers that are more reliable than the opinions of any individual.

Your proposed line of reasoning for a scientist ignores the realities that I have already explained several times. Being a team player is NOT how you get ahead in the scientific world. It can be a necessary step for a junior scientist to work on a team led by a senior scientist -- but how many scientists do you think want to spend their careers as junior scientists? How many would rather be the PI (Principal Investigator)? And while a "me-too" paper might get through peer review, it will garner few citations.

Let me explain how it works. You're a scientist. You do some research. You figure something out. You write it up as a paper and ship it off to a journal. They ship it out to three or more referees. The referees have some criticisms. You have to make corrections to the paper. You go through several cycles of this until you get something that the referees approve. Then they publish it.

But that's not the end of the story. Now other scientists read your paper. There are three possible responses:

1. They find errors in your paper, and write letters or papers debunking your paper. This is very bad for your career.

2. They find your paper correct but useless. Nobody even bothers to cite your paper in their own paper, because it's just a me-too paper.

3. They are surprised by the unexpected results you present. This starts new lines of thinking, inspires new experiments. Lots of people cite your paper in their own papers.

Now it comes time to decide whether you deserve tenure, or a promotion, or a grant, or membership in the NAS, or some scientific award or prize. And the people who make that decision look at one thing first and foremost: how many citations your papers have garnered. It's not how many papers you've published that counts -- it's how many citations your papers have gotten.

So your line of thinking #1 is most definitely NOT what a scientist would think. They don't need merely to get papers published -- they need papers that surprise other scientists, papers that generate citations.

As for line of thinking #2, it's not a matter of risking your career for the big hit, it's a matter of doing what's necessary to continue your career. And your assumptions about peer review and government funding are not only unsubstantiated, they're wrong.

Lastly, you stoop when you write, "Your view of the scientific process is hopelessly naive". I don't think you want to get into a pissing match with me about who has better credentials as a working scientist. I hate pissing matches, even when I win. Let's just concentrate on the evidence, OK?

Chris says:
"Raven, you seem to be making the case that the entire AGW hypothesis is based on the work of less than 20 people"

That is not what I said. I said there were maybe 20 people doing dendro similar to MBH and W&A. This means the pool of people who could claim to be experts enough to refute the work is very very small. Scientists tend to be very careful about stepping outside their area of expertise which means their default position will be to support a scientist whose work has been peer reviewed. You cannot claim that 1000s of scientists of personally reviewed these works and the criticisms. That is why the "consensus" is an illusion that does mean much when talking about specific papers.

You seem to missing my point that there are plently of opportunities to do original research while sticking within the accepted paradigm. For example, if Mann was so inclined he could have used his techiniques to find some proxies that would support a very warm MWP. If he had done that he still would have done 'original' research that by producing a high resolution, global paleoclimate study but would not have earned the noteriety he did with the hockey stick. The same kind of decisions affect every scientist who is looking for reserach avenues. Do something original that supports the objectives of other scientists and the funding agencies and you are a hero. Do something that goes against the objectives of other scientists and the funding agencies then you have a an uphill battle. Its called human relations 101.

You also seem to forget that climate science is NOT like other science fields because it has become politicized. This means contrarians don't have to just deal with their peers - they need to deal with legions of rent seeking activists that see GW as a way to push their pet agendas. How many scientists would want to go through the vicious public attacks that people like Linzden, Spencer and Christy have faced?

That said, the biggest issue I have with the state of AGW science is what I call "uncertainty denial" - the tendency for scientists to exagerrate the certainty or signficance of their results. You see this from both skeptics and warmers. This means public is getting a distorted view of how certain the science really is - especially when faced with the political activists who interfer in the debate to promote their own agendas.

To give you an example of 'uncertainty denial' I will point to the repeated claims that we know it is CO2 because only CO2 can explain the recent warming because the models say so. However, that argument depends on the assumption that the models are actually reliable - an assumption that has not/cannot be proven because it takes too long to collect the data. No self respecting engineer would ever claim that a computer model was reliable by testing against hindcast - yet is the rational the climate modellers use to justify their models.

Also on Prometheus:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-hockey-stick-debate-as-a-matter-of-science-policy-4511

The Hockey Stick Debate as a Matter of Science Policy

August 13th, 2008
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Here at Prometheus we have for years closely followed the controversy over the so-called temperature reconstruction “hockey stick.” So it was with some interest that I saw this blog post linked from Climate Audit, apparently written by a Scottish libertarian blogger called Bishop Hill. Hill writes of the recent years of the hockey stick debate:

The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cynicism that is rife among climate scientists, and I’m going to try to tell it in layman’s language so that the average blog reader can understand it.

And indeed Hill’s post is well-written, and accurate as far as I can tell. Of course, such stories have as many sides as there are participants, so if any of those involved including Steve McIntyre or Caspar Ammann would like to post or comment here, they’d be welcome.

Long-time readers (do we have any?;-) will recall that in the fall of 2005 we issued a challenge to Steve McIntyre and Michael Mann, the lead protagonists on either side of the debate, to explain to us policy-oriented folks why we should care about their very public squabbling.

Steve McIntyre took us up on our challenge (as did his collaborator Ross McKitrick). Michael Mann declined the invitation. McIntyre explained that the debate over the hockey stick mattered not because of its direct relevance to the debate over what to do about global warming, but because of matters of what we call around here “science policy“– peer review, public confidence in science, and simply getting this right rather than wrong. McIntyre explained that if he were the head of the IPCC,

I would be particularly angry at being placed in a position where I used this logo and wasn’t fully informed about adverse information pertaining to it. I also wouldn’t be leaving it up to some probably adversarial committee like the Barton Committee to sort this out. I’d be all over the problem so that my community, the community of climate scientists, was not further embarrassed and so that government institutions would be able to rely confidently on the opinions of IPCC. . .

If our very logo for IPCC TAR blew up on us, then something was wrong with our procedures for review. I wouldn’t go around patting ourselves on the back and telling everyone that this was the most “rigorous” review procedure in the history of science, since we’d goofed on such a prominent issue. I’d want to know why we goofed and how to avoid it in the future, or at least, how to minimize the chances of a recurrence. So when some redneck tried to use the Hockey Stick fiasco against IPCC, I’d at least have an answer.

While I am not in a position to evaluate the merits of the technical arguments of McIntyre’s criticisms of the Hockey Stock (the NAS and Wegman Reports weighed in on that), his complaints about the science policy aspects of the issue have stood the test of time.

In response to the Bishop Hill piece McIntyre writes:

There’s a definite foolhardiness and contemptuousness of the public by the IPCC and, in particular, the core of the Hockey Team. . . Every step of the process has been publicly documented. You’d think that they’d have been extra diligent in their reviewing. Instead, what we see is one thing botched after another and one sly manouevre after another.

If this is representative of how climate articles are written and how climate peer reviewing is done, what a pathetic performance. They might say - well, this is a bad example. To which I’d say, well, you knew that it was in the public eye, it should have been a good example, why wasn’t it?

I’ve compared the issue to the WMD argument, which was also a cheap way of arousing the public; and, myself to an analyst who observes that an aluminum tube is sometimes just an aluminum tube. That doesn’t mean that other arguments for the war couldn’t be made or that the war was right or wrong; just that it was justified based on the aluminum tube argument. In that case, some effort was made to understand why they got the WMD intelligence wrong.

I agree. Having collaborated a bit with Steve McIntyre in recent years, and seen how the community reacts to him in the peer review process, I have seen some of the frothing and irrationality that he stirs. Further, as a long-time observer of this debate, how the more vocal climate science community has dealt with the criticisms of the Hockey Stick and McIntyre’s determined efforts is really an embarrassment to all of the hard-working and brilliant scientists who work out of the limelight trying to advance knowledge in a rigorous manner. The problem is that the behavior of the few reflects upon the community as a whole.

McIntyre may never get the recognition that he deserves from the climate science community (though some, like Peter Webster and Judy Curry have shown leadership by recognizing Steve’s legitimacy, and apparently taken their lumps for it), but within science policy circles it is becoming increasingly clear that has made a significant contribution to upholding the integrity of climate science, and for this he should be applauded.

Chris Crawford writes: "OK, Steve, so you assume that it's not a conspiracy, but rather a kind of mass delusion, in which thousands of scientists the world over have succumbed to some mysterious force that causes them to lose their objectivity with respect to AGW. And what might this mysterious force be? How does it operate on their minds?"

--- It's a big jump to move from a specific case; described elsewhere above as a 'micro-conspiracy', where a handful of collaborators allegedly did engage in the skullduggery; to some kind of 'grand conspiracy'.

Chris says: "Sure, a scientist can eke out a dismal existence publishing 'me too' papers that merely confirm what everybody already knows. Is that the kind of scientist you want to be?"

--- Have you forgotten the $50 billion? The unprecedented funding thrown at one side of this, for whatever dubious social/political reasons, changes everything. That's why people are saying that science has changed and will suffer from this corruption.

Chris says: "Now it comes time to decide whether you deserve tenure, or a promotion, or a grant, or membership in the NAS, or some scientific award or prize. And the people who make that decision look at one thing first and foremost: how many citations your papers have garnered."

--- unless of course you're Al Gore and someone has a spare Nobel gong to hand out ;-)

Chris, you just can not understand how your own belief in a mammoth conspiracy colors your writings. It is obvious to those who do not share that belief. Please desist.

There is no mammoth conspiracy nor belief in one!

Chris

Have a read of the lead article in Australian Institute of Geoscientists Newsletter, Issue 87, February 2007

http://www.aig.org.au/assets/22/AIGNews_Feb07.pdf

"Science and Pseudo-Religion"

I think you might discover an answer to your quandry over why so many scientists seem to support AGW.

The Newsletter is about 4Mb in size.

"If McIntyre could get the story straight, I might think he had a point. Yet he continually resorts to personal attacks, and misrepresents what the science is."

SJT you filthy nihilistic dog. Mate this is serious. This is the whole thing. This is the difference between barbarism and humane civilisation.

Now that we have lost traditional religion what is the thin blue line that distinguishes us from mere animals?

I myself am an atheist. But how can you be so flippant about the final attempts to corrupt all public reason and all science by the continuing attempts to make out that Manns efforts were not blatant fraud?

Had he made a mistake an repented it might have enhanced the propects of the species. But this is the final pillar that science-frauds like yourself seem so determined to kick over.

We are just so lost if liars like you and Mann get away with lying all the time and never admitting that you are wrong and have been lying and pay the price.

I'm for drug legalisation too. But I remember Lee Kwon Yew saying that if they could kill the drug-dealer 100 times then he would do it. Because he faced such a fragile city-state caught between racial tension and communist influence.

So I was oddly sympathetic since one would protect the viability of the city at all costs.

But liars, frauds and white-anters like you and Mann are just so unacceptable. We have to stop it and it would be better to get Mann and murder and revive him 100 times over to stop this rampant lying than to see one of the last pillars of our society destroyed.

But then one supposes our society would be destroyed by the other avenue of political repression.

So while you deserve to die ten times over your rampant anonymous lying. And while I'd kill you 100 times if that meant that humane civilisation would be saved.....

... The fact is we have to rely on mass-sackings alone.

You science-frauds are in to win this time. There is really no stopping you by some sort of collegial chatting. You lie all the time. You are in contempt of evidence. Only a campaign of mass-sackings can possibly retrieve this situation.

Raven, you and I seem to be talking past each other in regards to the "20 scientists" matter. My point is that whether these 20 people are right or wrong is immaterial to the AGW hypothesis, because the AGW hypothesis is founded upon a huge range of data. I get the impression that your position is "Take away the temperature reconstructions and AGW collapses." Is my impression correct?

You write, "if Mann was so inclined he could have used his techiniques to find some proxies that would support a very warm MWP"

This assumes that such proxies exist. Let's say that they do. Then what would stop some eager scientist from making his mark by digging up those proxies and showing that Mann screwed up big time? Nothing at all. And in fact, a coup like that would catapult a scientist into the upper reaches of the scientific community overnight. It would force a massive rethinking of everything. That's a huge incentive. I refuse to believe that all those scientists are too dumb or too lazy to contemplate that possibility. And yet, with all those scientists daydreaming of mighty triumphs, not one of them has come up yet with the proxy you assume exists. I think a more reasonable conclusion, for the moment, is that such a proxy doesn't exist. Maybe it does, maybe somebody will find it someday. But given the fact that we've got lots of people sniffing around for it, and nobody has found it yet, I think it more reasonable to provisionally hold that it doesn't exist.

You note that climatology has become highly politicized and that this has surely prejudiced scientists. In particular, you note the invective directed at scientists who oppose AGW. Yet that sword cuts both ways. There's invective directed at scientists who support AGW. Just read some of the nasty things written about Mr. Amman in this very article and its comments. Read some of the things that Senator Inhofe has said about them. The mud flies in both directions and so I don't think it constitutes a biasing factor.

Moreover, let's consider a similar example: nuclear power. Back in the 1970s nuclear power was a hot topic, with lots of screaming and yelling going on. The scientific community was called upon to render judgement on the technical questions. There was considerable public sentiment against nuclear power. Yet the scientific community was not deterred by public sentiment -- it issued its reports based on the science, not the politics. The APS published a detailed report concluding that radioactive waste disposal did not offer any serious technical challenges. Other studies reached conclusions similarly supportive of nuclear power. Most of the public simply rejected or ignored the scientific reports because they had already made up their minds -- not unlike current AGW opponents.

"the biggest issue I have with the state of AGW science is what I call "uncertainty denial" - the tendency for scientists to exagerrate the certainty or signficance of their results."

IPCC AR4 presents formal statements of the uncertainty of each of its important conclusions. Which of these uncertainty statements do you take issue with?

Jimmock suggests that it's not a global conspiracy, but merely a 'micro-conspiracy'. If so, then the obvious question to ask is, how do the members of the micro-conspiracy manage to control the behavior of the people who aren't part of the conspiracy?

I shall assume that his next point is an answer to this question: that the micro-conspirators have infiltrated and taken over the grant agencies and are now controlling the scientific community through these grants. This raises the same questions that we applied previously: what motivates these conspirators? how have they managed to keep their conspiracy secret for so long? etc.

Lastly, Jimmock raises the Nobel Prize that was given to Al Gore and the IPCC scientists. The catch, of course, that it was the Nobel PEACE Prize, not a scientific prize, so it has little career value. And the fact that it was awarded to the IPCC and its thousands of scientists means that it is useless for any individual scientist for career purposes.

CoRev writes: "There is no mammoth conspiracy nor belief in one!"

Very well, if so, then I ask you why a rational objective observer should accept your beliefs regarding AGW over those of the experts?

Louis, I read the article to which you referred me and I found it wrong in several places and pedestrian where it was right. The central mistake it makes is the assertion that experiment is a necessary component of science. On this basis, the author implicitly rejects astrophysics as science, and indeed any historical science, such as Big Bang theory and evolution theory.

But I want to re-assert the central point I'm hammering away at: the fundamental flaw in opposition to AGW is that it is rejected by the community of experts. A rational objective observer would surely choose to believe a community of experts over a handful of dissenters. Therefore, the opponents of AGW are forced to embrace preposterous theories involving conspiracies, mass delusion, or similar weirdness to maintain their position.

I decry Graeme Bird's violent invective. His implicit death threat is far beyond the limit of civilized discussion. I request that other members of this discussion weigh in with their reactions to Mr. Bird's death threats.

Chris said: "...then I ask you why a rational objective observer should accept your beliefs regarding AGW over those of the experts?" What are my beliefs? You certainly do not know. But yours are obvious. "...the opponents of AGW are forced to embrace preposterous theories involving conspiracies, mass delusion, or similar weirdness to maintain their position."

So, there can be NO DEBATE nor SKEPTICISM, the essence of science. Sad, really.

Chris said: "...then I ask you why a rational objective observer should accept your beliefs regarding AGW over those of the experts?" What are my beliefs? You certainly do not know. But yours are obvious. "...the opponents of AGW are forced to embrace preposterous theories involving conspiracies, mass delusion, or similar weirdness to maintain their position."

So, there can be NO DEBATE nor SKEPTICISM, the essence of science. Sad, really.

"Raven, you and I seem to be talking past each other in regards to the "20 scientists" matter. My point is that whether these 20 people are right or wrong is immaterial to the AGW hypothesis, because the AGW hypothesis is founded upon a huge range of data. "

No you are lying. They don't have any data that supports their point of view. None at all.

THEY DON'T HAVE THE DATA.

So why are you lying about it?

CoRev suggests that I am attempting to squelch debate. By no means is this correct. We desperately need a rich debate. But amateurs are not the best people to debate scientific issues; they only muddle things up with their own lack of expertise. The scientific debate is intense and continuous, but it doesn't take place on popular websites. It takes place in the scientific literature, where scientists organize their thoughts and articulate them precisely. I remind you that the publication of a scientific paper does not constitute certification of an idea; it means only that the referees deem it to be sound enough to be worthy of serious consideration. Over the course of the next few years, other scientists will publish their own papers supporting or contradicting the content of a paper (if it's an interesting paper). And over the course of years, the community develops a general sense of what's right, what's wrong, and what's uncertain. But to be part of that community, you have to read the literature. Unless you're reading a lot of scientific papers in your field, you really don't understand it well enough to understand what's going on.

Let me compare the process to the development of a political community. Let's take conservatives, although I could just as usefully use liberals for this discussion. How does a conservative form their political opinions? Mostly it's by reading lots of opinions from other conservatives and deciding what seems right. All the conservatives are busy talking to each other and slowly developing a sense of a community position. For example, eight years ago conservatives in the USA were united in their belief that taxes were too high and had to come down. But now the deficit has exploded to record high levels, the dollar is falling, the economy is under a lot of stress, and a lot of conservatives are torn between their desire for lower taxes and a balanced budget. The debate rages in blogs, newspapers, magazines, and on television. The community deliberates. A consensus has not yet developed -- conservatives want to have it both ways and aren't quite convinced that they CAN'T have it both ways. So they discuss it among themselves. At some point, a consensus will start to emerge reflecting a new balance of opinion.

Now, suppose that you're a conservative who has been following all this for years. Suppose further that you are visited by a distant relative from Liechtenstein who doesn't follow American politics. In discussing the situation, your relative declares for one side or the other. He insists that balancing the budget is obviously the correct course of action, even though he really isn't familiar with Social Security, the capital gains tax, the inheritance tax, the mortgage payment deduction, or any of the other intricacies of the American tax regime.

How do you respond to your Liechtensteinian relative? Do you acknowledge that his opinion is just as valid as your own? Or do you gently suggest that he needs to read the literature before coming to a conclusion?

The way to get a good, rich debate is to bring together the people who know what they're talking about and let them duke it out. We also have to get the noisemakers out of the debate room so that the knowledgeable people aren't distracted with ignorant pap. A football game in which spectators flood onto the field to help their team is not a good football game. Let the pros do their job and abide by their results.

This doesn't mean that citizens have no voice. Citizens have the controlling voice in civic matters -- not scientific ones. The AGW opponents are fighting on losing ground -- they're trying to fight scientists when they don't have the scientific expertise to do battle. The end result is inevitable: the AGW opponents will be discredited. So when the debate moves to the arena where citizens DO have a role to play (deciding what to do about AGW), most people will dismiss the anti-AGW people as nut cases. Which is too bad, because I think that there are serious political issues to decide about AGW. We're going to face some hard choices, and if one side of the debate enters the debate room covered with shame, they're starting at a disadvantage that will bias the debate unfairly.

Chris, I am not suggesting you are attempting to squelch debate. you are ridiculing debate.

And when you say: "...and if one side of the debate enters the debate room covered with shame, they're starting at a disadvantage that will bias the debate unfairly." You obviously ignore the fact that it is the AGW Dendro scientists that is being covered in shame.

Furthermore, the scientists MUST convince the dirty proletariat to spend more, and in these matters the arguments must be clear and without controversy. The AGW mission is failing miserably in this area.

When it starts to effect our personal pocket books we get really, really cautious. Poorly framed theories get ignored and politicos supporting them get punished.

"Chris, I am not suggesting you are attempting to squelch debate. you are ridiculing debate."

No, my aspersions are not directed at the debate, but at the errors of one side of the debate. Big difference, that.

"it is the AGW Dendro scientists that is being covered in shame."

That's your perception. It is not shared by the supermajority of scientists.

"the scientists MUST convince the dirty proletariat to spend more, and in these matters the arguments must be clear and without controversy. The AGW mission is failing miserably in this area."

I have two objections to this reasoning. First, it is not the duty of scientists to convince anybody of anything. They simply give their best judgement, and if the body politic chooses to ignore it, that's their right. We had this happen once before with nuclear power. The scientists presented their best judgement that nuclear power is in fact a safe and viable technology, but the opponents of nuclear power managed to convince the public to ignore the science. As a consequence, we failed to utilize an important source of energy, which only increased our dependence upon fossil fuels, and we are in worse shape for rejecting the judgement of the experts. Now we have exactly the same thing happening with AGW, except this time it's conservatives, not liberals, leading the charge against science.

My second objection to your argument is that you are demanding a standard of certainty ("without controversy") that is impossible to achieve in any political decision. The scientists who found in support of nuclear power were not able to give an absolute 100% guarantee that there would never be any problems. They reported that the likelihood of serious problems was very small. In the same way, we don't have proof that the Iranians are building a bomb, but should the lack of proof lead us to conclude that no action is necessary? I would argue that we have far more confidence that AGW will cause us injury in the future than we have that Iran will cause us injury in the future. So if we can take action against the Iranian nuclear program, why shouldn't we take action against AGW?

"When it starts to effect our personal pocket books we get really, really cautious. Poorly framed theories get ignored and politicos supporting them get punished."

Which is why we should start debating the RESPONSE to AGW rather than the EXISTENCE of AGW. The AGW opponents are so busy fighting the science that they're not participating in the really important debate, and policy decisions are being made without these people even at the negotiating table.

Graeme Bird - if you don't moderate your comments, then I'll have to keep editing/deleting them until your IP is banned.

Chris, you continue to make these grandiose statements that you just can not know and because of their magnitude can not be true. For instance: "It is not shared by the supermajority of scientists."

A foolish statement that no one can know nor dispute. As well as your mammoth conspiracy theory.

We can not "start debating the RESPONSE to AGW" without it's impact(s) being better defined. you see I doubt that you would find too many here that did not already believe in AGW. Just ask again about the UHI effect, or land use, or development. What would your proposal(s) be to solve these problems? They are probably in general acceptance as AGW problems.

You seem to react to most questions as an attack on the core science. No! They are skepticisms over some of the core believes. Two recent threads here: 1) the call to define the "Climate Crisis" 2) The request for the seminal documents; have resulted in near null sets of supporting evidence. Like it or not, they do not add to the debate until those issues are clearly defined for folks like me. Otherwise, I, representing the unwashed proletariat will continue to scoff and react negatively when our pocket books are threatened.

G'day to you sir/madam. I*t has been interesting but taken us too far off subject to continue.

Chris Crawford says:
"This assumes that such proxies exist. Let's say that they do. Then what would stop some eager scientist from making his mark by digging up those proxies and showing that Mann screwed up big time? Nothing at all. And in fact, a coup like that would catapult a scientist into the upper reaches of the scientific community overnight"

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/

Craig Loehle's paper which did exactly this. He earned nothing but scorn and invective from the alarmists. What you are missing is there is no "truth" when it comes to climate science because nothing can be theoretically or experimentally proven. It is all opinion based on poor datasets which have been adjusted and readjusted over the years to ensure a better fit the most popular theory.

Incidently, Mann's statistical techniques were sufficiently bad that he would have been able to come up with almost any shape he wanted. You should know this if you took the time to read about the criticisms. If you have not read and understood McIntyre criticism then why are you even trying to defend the the climate science community?

Thank you Paul Biggs. I would hope G Bird would address issues, but some of his comments are quite unjustifiable.

Chris Crawford at August 14, 2008 09:47 AM says "John F. Pittman argues that the processes of peer review were violated by CC and Messrs Wahl and Amman." I did say "the AGW proponents have made a concerted effort not to acknowledge, or correct the problems confirmed by Dr. Wegman and later again in the North NAS report." In particular the reference was to Wahl and Amman as the AGW proponents. If this constitutes violating the processes of peer-review then the statement is correct.

You then say "Perhaps so; but I see little hard evidence of this." I said "There is no complex argument. Though the case may not be simple, the authors and therefore IPPC AR4 contended that M&M was incorrect due to a technicality, that these authors then revealed that they had come up with the same result as M&M. And even funnier, this finding by M&M was what Dr. Wegman testified to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the findings of his own report. So, despite M&M being shown to have correct critisms of certain temperature reconstructions, the IPCC in AR4 still incorrectly deal with this subject. I submit if there is a conspiracy, it should be named after quite a good read "A Conspiracy of Dunces". If there is such a thing as a "denialist" pertaining to the climate, it is someone claiming that what M&M published in a peer reveiwed work is incorrect." And this was a reference to where I said "So the argument is about R^2, a standard statistic." Which is from where it was said "McIntyre's first action as a peer reviewer was therefore to request from Wahl and Amman the verification statistics for their replication of the stick. Confirmation that the R2 was close to zero would strike a serious blow at Wahl and Amman's work." So I provided the hard evidence: the problem with MBH and the W&A is that W&A results of emulating MBH hockey stick agreed with the M&M peer reveiwed work that these results were statistically meaningless. Your refusal to look the the evidence from Wegman, North, M&M, and the new A&W and the new W&A does not make the evidence go away. It underlines the fact that you will not look or have not looked.

You said "The important point though, is that this case does not constitute evidence in support of a conspiracy theory. Indeed, I read little in your post that directly addresses the conspiracy theory." My statement was that it would be a "Conspiracy of Dunces" which I thought you would realize that I find the claims by all of some great conspiracy ridiculous. However, note as many have already done, someone, as you seem to have implied as my point that "the processes of peer review were violated by CC and Messrs Wahl and Amman" does not constitute a conspiracy. It should be obvious as several have pointed out, it is your claim that the skeptics have a conspiracy theory. Since I do not have one, and do not know of one, I chose humor to express my POV.

CoRev takes me to task for making grandiose statements. As an example he cites the case in which he wrote:

"it is the AGW Dendro scientists that is being covered in shame."

to which I replied:

"That's your perception. It is not shared by the supermajority of scientists."

CoRev's specific complaint is that I cannot possibly know that to be true. My evidence is the absence of condemnations coming from the scientific community; all the complaints are coming from the AGW opponents. CoRev, if you can direct me to condemnations or otherwise shaming comments from the general scientific community (NOT from AGW opponents), then I'll be happy to retract my claim.

"We can not "start debating the RESPONSE to AGW" without it's impact(s) being better defined."

Yes, we can. We already know the basic problem and the basic solution: reduce carbon emissions. We can now start to debate how much sacrifice we're willing to make to tackle the problem. Those decisions are already being made by governments all over the world. If you refuse to participate in those discussions, then you'll have no basis for complaint if they produce results you find undesirable.

"What would your proposal(s) be to solve these problems? "

I have no such proposals. That's a topic that needs discussion, but it's a political discussion, not a scientific one.

"You seem to react to most questions as an attack on the core science. No!"

Part of our problem here is that there are many people offering different points of view. Although you strongly reject the conspiracy hypothesis, there are a number of people here who apparently embrace it. I have encountered a broad gamut of opinions, including outright rejection of well-established scientific principles. I try to explain those principles where appropriate.

"Otherwise, I, representing the unwashed proletariat will continue to scoff and react negatively when our pocket books are threatened."

That's your right. You are not required to believe any scientific hypothesis. If you choose to reject spending on space projects because you believe that the earth is flat, and such projects take money out of your pocket, that's your right. If you don't want your hard-earned money going to pay for research in the life sciences because you reject the theory of evolution, that is again your right. And if you can convince the majority of citizens that the earth is flat, or that evolution is wrong, and as a result they make political decisions antagonistic to these scientific hypotheses, that's fine with me. It has already happened once before with nuclear power. It might happen again with AGW.

Raven argues that Mr. Loehle's recent paper provides precisely the kind of alternative temperature reconstruction that I had described earlier as an example of an incentive to rock the boat. Obviously, Mr. Loehle's paper has not succeeded in rocking the boat. I poked around on the web and dug through lots of pages from AGW opponents (gadzooks, there are a lot such sites!) but the only detailed analyses I could find were at RealClimate and ClimateAudit. After going through these I concluded that the credibility of this paper remains in doubt. Let's see how the literature responds to it before we start drawing any conclusions about it. The most interesting index of success will be the number of citations the paper collects.

The claims that such papers can't be published are flatly contradicted by the publication of this paper. I saw no evidence of retaliatory action against Mr. Loehle, no cancellation of grants or anything similar. In other words, all the blather about 'herd instinct' and social pressure and so forth is hokum. Raven's suggestion that his paper has not resulted in a revolution in thought on climate change assumes that the paper is flawless and provides indubitable evidence against the AGW hypothesis. If you read the objections to it at Real Climate, as well as the support for it at Climate Audit, I think you'll see that this paper is certainly dubitable. It might be right. It might be wrong. In any case, it's not compelling enough to force the issue.

"What you are missing is there is no "truth" when it comes to climate science because nothing can be theoretically or experimentally proven."

Actually, there's no "truth" in any science because NOTHING in science can be theoretically or experimentally proven. (Proof is a concept from mathematics, not science.) The best you can do is assemble enough evidence that a rational objective observer who considers all the evidence will come to the conclusion that the hypothesis is correct.

John F. Pittman, your most recent post is mostly a repetition of arguments you made earlier, and I have nothing new to add to my response. However, I'll note that your comment "It underlines the fact that you will not look or have not looked" is devoid of evidentiary support.

How important is the hockeystick?

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_millenm.html
Still shamlessly listed as evidence by ncdc.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990304052546.htm
The basis for every above the fold media blurb touting "[fill in year of choice here] Was Warmest Year Of Millenium."

Only 10% of the overall case for gw?

Here are excerpts from the IPCC WG1 Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996) (SAR) Executive summary - http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/440.htm

From the section "A longer and more closely scrutinised observational record":
- "New reconstructions of the surface temperature record of the last 1,000 years indicate that the temperature changes over the last 100 years are unlikely to be entirely natural in origin, even taking into account the large uncertainties in palaeo-reconstructions."

From the section "New model estimates of internal variability":
- "Since the SAR, more models have been used to estimate the magnitude of internal climate variability. Several of the models used for detection show similar or larger variability than observed on interannual to decadal time-scales, even in the absence of external forcing." - [what did they use to establish the baseline of interannual to decadal variablity? - guess]

In the section "New estimates of responses to natural forcing":
- "Fully coupled ocean-atmosphere models have used reconstructions of solar and volcanic forcings over the last one to three centuries to estimate the contribution of natural forcing to climate variability and change. Including their effects produces an increase in variance on all time-scales and brings the low-frequency variability simulated by models closer to that deduced from palaeo-reconstructions."

The next four sections "Improved representation of anthropogenic forcing", "Sensitivity to estimates of climate change signals", "Qualitative consistencies between observed and modelled climate changes", and "A wider range of detection techniques" are all refering to computer simulation improvements.

Minus the computer sims, the hockeystick is referenced or used as a benchmark in 100% of the SAR executive summary. Including sims the ration is 3/7ths.

Chris, I think the reason many of us here doubt the veracity of many of the claims of many AGW pronents is because as yet we are still within the bounds of what has occured in recent history.
None of us ( i think) doubt that temperatures have risen since the LIA. Few I think would dispute that co2 has a role to play in the "greenhouse effect". However we are sceptical about how much additional warming would be created by a doubling of co2.
We are also sceptical about the ability of models to predict the consequences of more co2. There are too many variables and too little understanding of hugely important matters like water vapour ( acknowledged by the IPCC ...but they are still prepared to make 90% certainty statements) and negative feedbacks.
Historically co2 lags temperature not vice versa. Didnt stop Gore lying to us. And whilst he is no scientist, did any AGW scientist proponents come out and tell us this?

I started as a believer in AGW, but when I started delving it became apparent to me that there is far from a scientific consensus , despite many scientists and leaders tellings us the debate is over.

Scientists like Hansen have been very political in their statements. And nearly every day we are told of a new problem that scientists have found that will arise from AGW......maybe a beat up by the media as well.

It does seem to me that too much faith is placed on models and that there are too many doomsday scenarios linked to a small warming of the planet.

There will be many benefits if the effect of additional co2 leads to a further small warming.

There are many scientists making a living from AGW. I do not believe they are lying to us. But I do believe they are biased by there own beliefs and self interest.....just think Rosenthal rats here! I also believe that many of the scenarios and thinking is based on a small set of data that may be far from accurate.

It really does seem to me that Mann's hockey stick has been proved to be based on poor maths and science, and the fact that it is used and still referred to does the propents of AGW no favours at all.....but this may be because if you do believe the medieval warm period existed and was warmer than today ( and i do), it takes a pretty big leap of faith to start getting excited about current temperature increases. Except to be concerned about teh political and economical consequences of trying to to fix a problem that may well not exist and is certainly unfixable with our current technology
I do not say AGW is not happening, but there does appear to be a lot of reasons to be sceptical....not the least of which is the predicted hot spot not happening!
I think we should be seeking alternative energy sources for the obvious reason fossil fuels are finite ( sorry Louis not convinced about your abiotic oil wells?)...so the govt should be giving research and development incentives to business to speed up this process. BUT I am firmly against an ETS or carbon tax!! And the consequences of imposing one will be very significant for many, for no feasible change.
You are right that is the politics not the science. But since there really does seem to be doubt over some of the science ( such as how much warming will a doubling create), we need to be very careful about where we let the science take us.

In 5 or 10 ..maybe 30 years if the science is wrong, will anybody ever listen again?

Graeme Bird, please be polite and don t say stupid things, you make the rest of us look bad and you are an embarrasment to the sceptics side of the debate....whilst Chris is a credit to his side!

You make good points, toby, and while I'd like to discuss all of them (there are some really important issues here), I want to concentrate on what I think is the most important one: trusting the scientists. You write:

"the reason many of us here doubt the veracity of many of the claims of many AGW pronents is because as yet we are still within the bounds of what has occured in recent history."

I don't follow. The scientists aren't claiming that we shouldn't be within the bounds of what has occurred in recent history. They're claiming that in 30 or 50 or 100 years the climate will be much different. So why should current climate trigger skepticism?

"we are sceptical about how much additional warming would be created by a doubling of co2."

Why are you skeptical? What models do you have that predict lower temperatures than are predicted by the models of the climatologists?

"We are also sceptical about the ability of models to predict the consequences of more co2. There are too many variables and too little understanding of hugely important matters like water vapour"

Yes, there are lots of variables in the models, and some of the relationships *are* poorly understood. But assessing the predictive value of these models is a very complicated business involving lots of judgement. If I wanted to make such an evaluation, I would study the model carefully, check how it models particular phenomena, run some tests, and talk it over with the creators to probe how well they understand what they're doing. Some of the scientists involved with IPCC have done exactly that, and they have concluded that the models are reasonably reliable in their general predictions. Yet you look at the same models and come to the opposite conclusion. On what basis do you believe that your judgement in this matter is superior to that of the scientists who know the material?

" But I do believe they are biased by there own beliefs and self interest.....just think Rosenthal rats here!"

I remind you that, in the 1970s, scientists thought that there was no evidence to support concerns about global warming. Even into the 1990s, many scientists were unwilling to conclude that the AGW hypothesis had strong support. Yet, since then we have seen a supermajority of scientists come to the conclusion that in fact the AGW hypothesis is well supported. So how could they have been biased by their own beliefs when they believed it wasn't true? Scientists were skeptical when there wasn't enough data. As more data came in, more scientists were convinced. They haven't been clinging to old ideas -- they have rejected old ideas because the evidence mounted.

Moreover, as I have previously explained, their self-interest lies in contradicting the established truth, not supporting it.

Craig,
"It might be right. It might be wrong. In any case, it's not compelling enough to force the issue."

Again - you miss the point. It is IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a proxy reconstruction that would conclusively invalidate the others because proxy reconstructions are, by their very nature, uncertain and inconclusive.

More importantly, many of the criticisms that Real Climate used to dismiss the Loehle RC also apply to a number of the IPCC approved papers such as Molberg et. al. (this hypocracy is not documented on the CA site). The main difference is Molberg et. al. played the team game accepted the AGW paradigm - where as Loehle is a skeptic that refused to accept that paradigm.

The Loehle example demonstrates that climate science is far from objective and the worth of a paper has little or nothing to do with its merit. The only thing that matter is whether it supports the AGW paradigm.

Actually, there's no "truth" in any science because NOTHING in science can be theoretically or experimentally proven. (Proof is a concept from mathematics, not science.) The best you can do is assemble enough evidence that a rational objective observer who considers all the evidence will come to the conclusion that the hypothesis is correct."

Raven, my impression is that the RealClimate criticisms do indeed apply to both the Loehle paper and several of the proxies used by the other studies, and that the overall conclusion is that NONE of these temperature reconstructions are terribly reliable, but if we take them all into account, we get a better overall picture of the past. I think you are jumping the gun when you write:

"The Loehle example demonstrates that climate science is far from objective and the worth of a paper has little or nothing to do with its merit. The only thing that matter is whether it supports the AGW paradigm."

The scientific community moves slowly and deliberately. We will see formal responses to the Loehle paper appearing in the literature over the next year or two. If the paper isn't torn to pieces, I would expect it to be discussed in the next IPCC report. Note, however, that these reports have been issued at six year intervals, so the next report is not due until 2013. (It may be scheduled for an earlier date.) The scientific community has not yet responded to the Loehle paper and you're already condemning it?

I'd like to take this opportunity to recapitulate the basic argument I've been making. I start by noting that the scientists are clearly in favor of AGW, and the AGW opponents do not have anywhere near the cumulative expertise of the scientists. Accordingly, a rational objective bystander would surely conclude that AGW is correct, and the AGW opponents are wrong.

The second step is to ask how the AGW opponents respond to this logic. There are a variety of responses. Some say that there's an evil conspiracy -- it appears that none of the serious commentators on this blog share that opinion. The more common view is that scientists are using poor judgement due to social pressures, 'herd instinct', or some other forces. I have addressed these arguments in detail and demonstrated quite clearly that in fact the reverse is true: scientists have a greater incentive to challenge AGW than to support it. While a number of commentators here do not accept my claims, none have, in my opinion, offered detailed arguments explaining why they reject my explanations.

So I think we have a killer argument here. AGW opponents routinely reject the judgement of expert scientists but they have no rational basis for doing so. This seems to me to strike at the very heart of the AGW opposition.

Thanyou for your thoughts again Chris, you say "The scientists aren't claiming that we shouldn't be within the bounds of what has occurred in recent history. They're claiming that in 30 or 50 or 100 years the climate will be much different. So why should current climate trigger skepticism?"
I think it makes me sceptical because I do not see the rate of warming as anything unusual.
Climate is naturally changing and unless these changes appear to be unnatural, then there appears to be nothing to be getting worked up about. Looking at temp charts I do not see a runaway temp change as yet.

However co2 is climbing and scientists tell us this adds to the greenhouse effect and will lead to significant temp changes......but how much change?....I do not trust the predictive capacity of models and experiments in labs that "prove" co2 increases will lead to large temp changes, because they are not capable of recreating the world in which we live....so I question the degree of change an increase in co2 will cause....as do many many scientists...I am sure yourself included?
This is where we then resort to models to try to factor in what happens in the real world.
But since I do not believe in the predictive capacity of the models, they dont work in finance or economics very well, so its a long stretch to believe they work for a chaotic climate system!

You ask me why I am sceptical of the predictive capacity of models....even the IPCC says they are not predictive....doesn t stop them making predictions based on them though.

You can create a model and test it on the past, and when it doesn t work find something to change and see if that then works.....but teh change you make whilst creating what you want may infact have not been what was causing teh original error.

In finance I have had many "modellers" come to sell me their sure fired way of making money and predicting the future. In my opinion they never work consistently and are frequently wrong. sometimes fraudulently , usually because they believe in it.....but if they are so accurate use your own money to get rich I tell them, and don t try and sell it to me to make your money!

Sorry I honestly do not think the models can predict climate acurately either....do you rally think we understand enough for "fudge factors" not to have to be included to recreate the past?

"I remind you that, in the 1970s, scientists thought that there was no evidence to support concerns about global warming"....over the last 30 years temps have warmed up again and co2 levels have risen, we have been using up more of the worlds resources and the population has been growing at a rate which at some stage will become unsustainable. people that can afford to( the west mainly) have increasingly become concerned with the environment and the much of the money being spent on science by governments has been focused on teh potential consequences of this. AGW is a great way to get some of this money and since it seems logical to believe that humans consuming and burning so many resources must have an impact on the planet.
So bingo lets look at AGW from co2 rises. We get scientists like Hansen ( who I believe thought we were heading into an ice age in the 70's)pushing the barrow as hard as he can ( because he belives i am sure), and as a result this reputable scientist(once? sorry but I am sceptical of this now because he is biased in his beliefs and has exagerated way too many things to be trusted ...IMO) starts to influence other scientists and their investigations.
We do not have empirical evidence for temps pre LIA so have to resort to proxy data which is notoriously prone to errors and the data being used then influences everybodies thinking......and this brings us back to the hocket stick and the "hiding" of the MWP.

Whilst scientists do not get super rich on the AGW bandowagon, they do get to maintain a secure job in an environment where tenure in universities and govt institutions was becoming more and more difficult to obtain. So funding is more easily come by to find evidence in favour of AGW, particarly gven the difficulties in proving anything either way, that to be arguing against it.
This does not preclude scientists from trying coming up with other hypothesis and arguing against AGW.....and there do appear to be many doing this.
hence i do not see the debate as over.
I agree with you there are many excellent scientists out there who support AGW, but there are also many excellent scientists who do not agree ( although granted far fewer).
Remember a majority of scientists agreeing does not make them right.

I would really like to see some AGW scientists come out and state like you have (to a question I raised yday about the reality of being able to influence climate by the west reducing co2 output)that the only way to fix the problem if it exists is to find some alternatives to fossil fuels. Aand since they are finite we will be natirally pushed this way over time.
Investing in these would make us the smart country not just the lucky country. So we need to create incentives to do this that have a minimal impact on creating an innefficient allocation of resources in the short to medium term.
Irrespictive of climate change finding these alternatives would be a real winner.
Maybe we should be starting with ways to store alternative energy to allow us to provide base load power?

regards Toby

On the "political" side of the debate,I heard a very intersting discussion on teh ABC recently where there was a suggestion that a prize should be awarded for the first person/ organisation that could create base load storage for renewable energies( other than water/ hydro!)...he suggested 1 billion dollars!...now there is an incentive!!

Thats the sort of the incentive that led to planes flying across the oceans and even boats like the cutty sark being designed for speed.

Govt taxes create a deadweight social loss in economic terms....so will a carbon tax and or ETS.

Economists have become involved in the debate, but reports like the Stern report seem to focus only on negatives and be based off worst case scenarios.

It certainly is time for this debate to also be political in nature and it is high time scientists in favour of AGW acknowledged that there is nothing that can be done about it until we find alternatives to fossil fuels.
When nuclear is given serious consideration ( i am not saying it is actually a viable option) I will start to believe that governments are really concerned and believe in AGW. Rudd won t even consider it so i am actually sceptical that he is doing anything other than playing politics!

Chris Crawford says
"AGW opponen